Modern Banned List [Archive] - Page 2

Mr. Safety

10-19-2012, 09:16 AM

I think the banned list is decent right now, but not perfect. The format is still growing despite the banned list, which means its probably ok to leave it alone for a little while.

I've been thinking about the lack of viable control decks in modern, and I think I have the answer:

1) In the absence of good permission and filter cards, control by neccessity must become a tap-out type of control. High-cost, high-impact control bombs need to be a focus. This is why U/W Tron is such a great deck in modern.

2) Be patient...the dig spells from recent sets has been really bad (the best ones being Grisly Salvage and Forbidden Alchemy.) I am hopeful, possibly overly optimistic, for a decent dig spell for modern that costs 2 mana in the next couple of Return to Ravnica sets.

3) Gifts Ungiven is still one of the best engines in modern, easily replacing the lack of decent filter spells (for now.) Gifts will only get BETTER with decent dig spells.

In a nutshell, if you want to play control in modern, sleeve up some mana acceleration and bombs. If you run into the tempo decks (U/R/W Delver et al) sideboard Spell Pierce or Mana Leak, and consider G/B for Abrupt Decay.

To put it in specific terms, I think Umezawa's Jitte and Stoneforge Mystic could possibly be un-banned. Reasoning? Jitte fights aggro decks really well and provides a utility source of life-gain against Grapeshot/Storm decks. If Aggro decks play jitte, just play your jitte and kill it. Mystic provides control decks with a great dig-spell along with an equip target, a nice card advantage package that isn't overpowered now that Abrupt Decay is in the format. Modern has a premium focus on removal anyways with it being so aggro driven, so I think Mystic could be a good inclusion. If Mystic were to really take off, Spell Snare becomes a decent option for Modern (one more relevant target for the one-mana hit-or-miss counterspell.)

Any other thoughts? I know this is a banned list discussion, which I think I'm on track fairly well, and I think this control hole in the meta-game is what really needs to be addressed in order to view the banned list appropriately.

SpikeyMikey

10-19-2012, 09:18 AM

Yeah, perhaps the word is vague to those not in my head. I mostly just mean that when I see those decks, they feel unique to me, like they're doing special things no other deck does - they feel interesting and awesome. UWR, RUG Delver, Jund, MonoRed, the UW Midrange decks - that's a large portion of Modern, and they don't feel special to me - they're all basically just list with a bunch of sweet creatures that beat down. It all feels mostly interchangeable. That's just my perception, my opinion. I understand that Jund fans would take offense to that, I just don't get excited by any of those options. Modern missing Control is also a big miss for me, as I love the Rock Paper Scissors type feel of Legacy's metagame, which Modern lacks. This is a separate topic, but while we're there, in my opinion Control is missing for a few reasons:

1. Filtering and card draw in Modern is garbage.

2. Jace and Sword of the Meek (this is more niche of course, but in Extended UW Gifts/Tezzeret the Seeker decks were quite good if I recall) are banned.

3. It's impossible to beat Tron with any Control deck that people are trying these days. Perhaps Grixis has a chance with Thoughtseize, Counterspells, and Sowing Salts, but you're still likely fighting for only games 2 & 3. I don't think I've seen more lopsided games of MTG than a deck like Gifts or Mystical Teachings of any sort vs. GR Tron. It's just completely unwinnable - it's just way to hard to interact, and Tron has the inevitability. Mystical Teachings/Gifts decks can't switch roles to be the beatdown all that easily.

B/W Tokens autoloses to Tron as well. U/W or R/G. It happens, it's part of the format. Without Force/Waste, Modern is going to continue to be a format where there will be decks you just cannot profitably interact with. It's just a bigger Standard. The last Modern GP I went to, *both* of my D1 losses were to UW Tron. You just shuffle up and play the next round. At the same time, however, Jund and Affinity were byes for me. Their matchup vs. me was as bad as my matchup vs. Tron.

Mr. Safety

10-19-2012, 09:32 AM

3. It's impossible to beat Tron with any Control deck that people are trying these days. Perhaps Grixis has a chance with Thoughtseize, Counterspells, and Sowing Salts, but you're still likely fighting for only games 2 & 3. I don't think I've seen more lopsided games of MTG than a deck like Gifts or Mystical Teachings of any sort vs. GR Tron. It's just completely unwinnable - it's just way to hard to interact, and Tron has the inevitability. Mystical Teachings/Gifts decks can't switch roles to be the beatdown all that easily.

Ghost Quarter should be in a control decks starting 60, if only for Tron decks and man-lands. Targeted grave hate goes a long way g2 for blowing them out, such as Extirpate or Surgical Extraction. I even think Cranial Extraction and Memoricide are good enough to fight the Tron decks. They also happen to be good against decks like Splinter Twin and Restore Balance (especially Surgical Extraction!)

If you have a matchup that is unwinnable, wouldn't the logical first step with your sideboard be to address that particular matchup? Also, depending on how popular that matchup is in the meta-game, you may want to accept that one or two matchups are unwinnable while most others are favorable. Most legacy decks need to do that because of the incredible depth of the format. I don't see why modern is that much different; it has enough depth to neccessitate that sort of approach (I think.)

(nameless one)

10-19-2012, 10:09 AM

Mr. Safety

10-19-2012, 10:28 AM

I know Jace the Mindsculptor is the hallmark Jace, but wouldn't Jace, Architect of Thought help when it comes to card filtering? Is he that terrible at protecting himself?

What about Tezzerator decks? Are they that terrible in doing anything? To my understanding, they biggest thing they lack is card filter. But wouldn't Thirst for Knowledge be okay in doing so?

Is the format that fast for true control decks to be established?

I don't think the format is too fast...and Tezzerator with Thirst sounds good. In fact, Tezz himself is a great filter card. What hurts him the most is the lack of artifact lands. Getting a Seat of the Synod to be a 5/5 threat is great technology, for sure. Darksteel Citadel can be used, but for the most part the deck has to be full of artifacts taking up space rather than the lands being the available threats (like Seat.) If I were to do Tezzerator I'd be playing Trinket Mage, Engineered Explosives, Pithing Needle, and Academy Ruins. Has anyone posted/seen a toolbox Tezzerator deck like that?

Regarding the new Jace...I hate Jace AoT...modern has MORE ways of dealing with him than standard. I know everyone thinks he's the shit and all, but I'm not convinced. For four mana you can have an easier to cast and more productive Gifts Ungiven. Just my opinion...

ahg113

10-19-2012, 11:36 AM

3. It's impossible to beat Tron with any Control deck that people are trying these days. Perhaps Grixis has a chance with Thoughtseize, Counterspells, and Sowing Salts, but you're still likely fighting for only games 2 & 3. I don't think I've seen more lopsided games of MTG than a deck like Gifts or Mystical Teachings of any sort vs. GR Tron. It's just completely unwinnable - it's just way to hard to interact, and Tron has the inevitability. Mystical Teachings/Gifts decks can't switch roles to be the beatdown all that easily.

Playing with a Mono-B Discard/Small Pox deck, I think Tron is an easy matchup. Between small pox and Tectonic Edge, killing lands isn't that difficult. Without Tron assembled, the decks falter. Surgical Extraction or Extirpate also just wreck shop, kill a land, remove all of them from the game... finished.

The desire to play a draw-go, counter-tempo isn't available in Modern. That doesn't mean control is dead. There is more to control in the game than just the stack.

JDK

10-19-2012, 11:49 AM

If you pack 4-Mana Hate against Combo-Decks like Storm, Twin or Tron (yep, it's basically a combo deck), you just get laughed at and lose horribly.

Mr. Safety

10-19-2012, 01:01 PM

If you pack 4-Mana Hate against Combo-Decks like Storm, Twin or Tron (yep, it's basically a combo deck), you just get laughed at and lose horribly.

In a vacuum, yes. If all you're counting on to keep you in the game is a 4-mana sorcery like Cranial Extraction you're foolish. BUT, if you can use discard/permission/removal to get you to turn 4, along with land drops or acceleration, it basically reads "tap 4 mana, win the game." It can also come down turn 3 with acceleration, which is one of my main points about viable control in modern: you need acceleration. Counterspells cost mana in modern, plan accordingly.

ahg113

10-19-2012, 01:49 PM

In a vacuum, yes. If all you're counting on to keep you in the game is a 4-mana sorcery like Cranial Extraction you're foolish. BUT, if you can use discard/permission/removal to get you to turn 4, along with land drops or acceleration, it basically reads "tap 4 mana, win the game." It can also come down turn 3 with acceleration, which is one of my main points about viable control in modern: you need acceleration. Counterspells cost mana in modern, plan accordingly.

Totally off topic- but expected given the Legacy-first environment... it seems like a lot of people dislike Modern because it is not Legacy. The most grievous offense, that there is a serious lack of cantrip-filters, and counterspells aren't free, basically, the tenets of blue have been de-emphasized. Well, isn't that the way it is for every other color, all-day every-day?

The Modern Ban List specifically nuked those type cards in order for Modern to be it's own format, and not Legacy-lite, "Now with new card frames!"

JDK

10-19-2012, 01:55 PM

So you want to play Control with acceleration? You know your card draw sucks, if you make -1 for mana. No control deck wants to use cards to accelerate and rely on it. Cards like Memoricide don't win the game, because people aren't stupid enough to only play one win-condition/combo-piece. 4-Mana to slow combo down? Even turn 3 this can be too late, if you are on the draw.

Mr. Safety

10-19-2012, 03:50 PM

Please pardon my bull-headed approach, but I disagree because I don't take Memoricide/Cranial in a vacuum. Plenty of decks can last long enough against combo decks to get to four mana. Something as simple as Remand coupled with targeted discard can provide enough time to play Memoricide. If its against Splinter Twin, name Splinter Twin and save your targeted removal for Kiki-Jiki. That takes care of both halves of the combo. I realize that this takes a lot of mana to pull off...back to acceleration.

If you're looking for card quality, there is no reason why you couldn't use Forbidden Alchemy or Thirst for Knowledge. Even Telling Time has promise as a decent instant-speed dig spell. More important than draw or dig is having the right mix of control factors in the first place. Pure control plays few threats and a ton of ways to neutralize the board/hand of opponents. This is not only possible but I feel probable in the near future. The meta-game is still defining itself in modern...someone, maybe Wafo-Tapa, will break out with a decent control list.

JDK

10-19-2012, 04:08 PM

You can disagree all you want and call it "vacuum" (which is ironic, because I actually take into account how combo currently works in Modern), but there is a reason for those cards not being boarded in against combo. They are slow, don't always get you the value you want them to give you and you basically have to spend your whole turn 3+ (most critical turn against combo) for it. If you are into that kind of "hate", then be my guest.

TonyRo

10-25-2012, 09:10 PM

Within the last week, two of SCG's best writers (Sam Black and Brian Kibler), as well as Carrie Oliver from CFB have written articles about the poor state of Modern, the lack of identity in the format, how Jund is screwing up the format a bit, and how it needs to be fixed. Specific suggestions include the unbanning of Nacatl, GSZ, Visions, Jace, Bitterblossom, and the banning of BBE. Interesting stuff. I think I agree with literally everything they wrote. Thoughts?

Lord Seth

10-25-2012, 10:58 PM

DragoFireheart

10-25-2012, 11:29 PM

Links to these articles would be nice.

TonyRo

10-26-2012, 08:39 AM

JDK

10-26-2012, 09:12 AM

If you reference something, link it. That's common courtesy.
Thanks.

DragoFireheart

10-26-2012, 10:13 AM

If you reference something, link it. That's common courtesy.
Thanks.

tsabo_tavoc

10-26-2012, 10:45 AM

No one can type in www.starcitygames.com and www.channelfireball.com and find them for themselves?

Kibler on Modern (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/modern/25089-PTRTR-And-The-Problem-Of-Modern.html)

Sam Black on Modern (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/modern/25083-Preparing-For-Pro-Tour-Return-To-Ravnica.html)

Carrie Oliver on Modern (http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/carrie-on-%E2%80%93-modern-day-problems/)

I can't see the premium articles and hope they are not as bad as the ChannelFireball one suggesting banning Bloodbraid Elf. It is not like some unbans would hurt the format. That said, I would not mind WotC screwing up the format and drive people to Legacy.

Jenni

10-26-2012, 11:07 AM

I honestly think un-bannings would be best for the format, not adding more to the list. Sensei's divining top, Jace, Ponder/Preordain, the Dredge cards, Nacatl, misstep, the artifact lands & Dread Return, are all cards I would like to see unbanned, before they even try to ban something else.
I know some of these open up the "unfair" decks (eg. the dredge deck would become a real thing), but the format is really not looking good right now, and bringing in some of these cards would add some new life to it I think.

The unbannings I mentioned would mean Control is a real thing, Counter-top becomes a potential deck, combo gets better cantrips, dredge becomes a deck, Zoo gets another good 1-drop, Affinity gets it's artifact lands, & Dread Return reanimation/combo becomes a potential deck.
Obviously there could be problems and re-banning might be in order, but these cards I think would be fine for the format.

ahg113

10-26-2012, 11:44 AM

@Jenni: I disagree. The banned list should stay as is. It effectively creates a different format than Legacy (with decks not so easily ported) minus revised dual lands and free counterspells.

I attribute the ~30% participation of Jund decks at the recent PT a sign of lazy deck builders and players. It's folks not taking time to either craft an effective deck, or learn how to play another option well. Goodcard.decs aren't great against a tuned opponent. There were 6 different decks in the top 8, that's more than enough diversity for the playerbase to experiment with.

The lack of U draw-go control is not a bad thing. If there are people dissatisfied with the format for the lack of U.dec abuse, lack of dredge, or lack of Jace, TMS - there's another format for you, it's called Legacy.

I don't think Bloodbraid Elf needs to be banned.

socialite

10-26-2012, 12:05 PM

The lack of U draw-go control is not a bad thing. If there are people dissatisfied with the format for the lack of U.dec abuse, lack of dredge, or lack of Jace, TMS - there's another format for you, it's called Legacy.

Revising the ban list would create a more interesting and skill defining format as opposed to the Fisher Price format we have now. What do you think would happen if a format similar to Legacy was created; devoid of expensive cards on the reserve list? You'd probably have a wildly fun and extremely popular format. I find it laughable that individuals on this forum seem to think Modern in it's current state will start to leach players from Vintage and Legacy, as Modern in it's current form is a huge joke.

Jenni

10-26-2012, 12:41 PM

@Jenni: I disagree. The banned list should stay as is. It effectively creates a different format than Legacy (with decks not so easily ported) minus revised dual lands and free counterspells.

I think the format would be different from legacy either way. some decks would be ported, but I think the weaker mana bases and the lack of brainstorms, force of wills, dazes, etc. would keep them from being as good in modern as they are here. Miracles might be a deck with diving top unbanned, for example, but without brainstorm they need to stick a jace to put miracles in hand back into their library.

The lack of U draw-go control is not a bad thing. If there are people dissatisfied with the format for the lack of U.dec abuse, lack of dredge, or lack of Jace, TMS - there's another format for you, it's called Legacy.

Personally I think it is a bad thing that there aren't any very good U/x heavy-control decks. One of the things keeping me from really taking modern seriously is their absence since control and prison decks are by far my favourite decks to play, and the ones most suited to my play style.

hi-val

10-26-2012, 01:00 PM

I find Kibler's reasoning on GSZ to suffer from the classic flaw of thinking that the best decks won't play new unbanned cards. If GSZ were legal, then Jund would slot four copies in pretty darned quickly.

I wonder how much actual tournament Modern people commenting here are playing. Granted, I don't have Modern events here locally, but I played at GP: Columbus. All of my opponents said that they liked the format. Having the same power level across most decks leads to the better player winning, too.

TonyRo

10-26-2012, 01:18 PM

ahg113

10-26-2012, 01:24 PM

I think the format would be different from legacy either way. some decks would be ported, but I think the weaker mana bases and the lack of brainstorms, force of wills, dazes, etc. would keep them from being as good in modern as they are here. Miracles might be a deck with diving top unbanned, for example, but without brainstorm they need to stick a jace to put miracles in hand back into their library.

Personally I think it is a bad thing that there aren't any very good U/x heavy-control decks. One of the things keeping me from really taking modern seriously is their absence since control and prison decks are by far my favourite decks to play, and the ones most suited to my play style.

In regards to manabases, how much weaker is Modern than Legacy?
Answer: the duals cost 2 life if you want it untapped, there are not allied fetches, only 1 artifact land instead of 6.

Different format, different trade-offs. There are still "single land, dual type" options. There is a lack of Wasteland & Price of Progress, which punish greedy manabases in Legacy. Ghost Quarter and Tectonic Edge are the leading LD options in Modern, and they're not "super-duper-everywhere." For these reasons, I think if you craft your deck around getting shocked occasionally, you can build just as effective a manabase in Modern as Legacy to fit a need (Sol-lands obviously excluded, just like Impulse or Elvish Spirit Guide, etc.)

If someone wanted to jam Miracles hard enough, there are ways to manipulate your draw still. It's called scry.

In contrast, I hate losing to U/x heavy-control & prison decks. I find them as anathema to Magic as Dredge, in the sense that one stops another player from participating, and the other eschews the typical code of play for non-interactivity.
I'd be much more agreeable if R/G LD was a thing, as it had once been, like pre-Urza, so long ago. That's a form of control, but Magic has decided that LD wasn't fun and basically got rid of that play style.

The lack of these type decks in Modern make the format exciting and fun. I still enjoy Legacy, playing a weird Team Italia deck or Belcher.

Cheers,
different strokes for different folks

TonyRo

10-26-2012, 01:25 PM

For those of you who don't have SCG Premium, will post a few statements from what the pros think (if it isn't okay to post these snippets, I can edit the post away):

"Modern looks like a diverse format because people show up with decks that look different, but many of them ultimately feel the same. It's still funny to me that cards like Wild Nacatl and Green Sun's Zenith are banned. The goal of banning Wild Nacatl was to increase the diversity of aggressive decks in the format. Where is that diversity?

I'll be playing in the upcoming Modern GP in Chicago, but I'm not excited about it. As it stands right now, all I want to do is play a deck designed to go toe-to-toe with Jund in resource exchange with a sideboard packed full of hate cards for the unfair decks. Maybe some kind of little kid G/W deck—who knows. I haven't started testing because I'm sick to death of the format.

I'm not sure what the best way to shake up Modern is, but I think unbanning Green Sun's Zenith is a good start. Don't worry—I'm not selfish. I could see Ancestral Visions, Jace, or Bitterblossom finding their way off the banned list as well. All I know is that something needs to happen because another tournament full of Jund and combo decks does not sound like my idea of a good time."

-Kibler

"As for Modern, I think it's a frustrating format. It looks relatively diverse because there are a lot of decks, but they're either extremely fragile unfair decks that can't beat a prepared opponent, or they're fair decks. The problem with the fair decks is that they're all basically the same. With no real card draw or library manipulation, every deck is forced to play an extremely similar curve and land ratio. You can basically choose whichever colors you want and play any of the "good cards" in those colors as long as you have a reasonable curve, but all the cards are mostly the same thing as all the other cards of their casting costs and the disruptive elements are strong enough that you can't play cards that are based on loose synergies.

Basically, I feel like the decks lack real identities and that the "good cards" have been played so much throughout history that it's all fairly bland."

-Sam Black

Phoenix Ignition

10-26-2012, 02:58 PM

That is certainly a lot of complaining from the pros.

I see 2 issues with what they're saying, the first is the idea of "only one midrange deck."

The decks I think are good in Modern right now:
Non-combo decks, in order of speed (not necessarily accurately):
1. Affinity
2. Red/black bump burn (less good than others, but it can just win games like mono-red burn in Legacy)
3. UWR delver
4. Jund
5. RUG delver
6. UW Control
7. Yasooka's RUG control

Combo or similar decks (not including the burn one since it's more of a sligh):
8. Tron (This is my least favorite deck of all)
9. Eggs
10. UR Storm
11. Scapeshift

So in terms of "only being 1 midrange deck" I guess they mean 1 midrange aggro, but even then UW control plays a lot of creatures (clique, finks, Restoration angel), and Yasooka's list was pretty mid-late game oriented. Granted it won off the backs of Snapcaster + Witness, but I'd consider it a mid-late game deck.

The second issue I have is them saying "nothing to sideboard against it." Well, what do you sideboard against decks like Junk in Legacy? It's just an all around good deck that has close to 50% matchups vs. the field. I'd say Jund takes much less skill to pilot to win a tournament with, but it's the same idea. Jund doesn't have a lot of matchups it just outright beats and similar for its losses. Against Jund there are definitely some things that will help you, but none that just beat it outright.

With RUG control I was sideboarding in 3x Huntmaster of the Fells, which is just incredible. I would also side in a 3rd Vedalken Shackles which is SEVERELY UNDERPLAYED. They have 2-3 cards in the deck to beat it, but you get to stall for almost literally every turn they are waiting to draw it. Jund is a deck that you want to use card advantage to beat. Kitchen Finks are pretty good against them, along with anything else that gives you extra life or creatures. I've used Thragtusk against them in my Deathcloud deck to such incredibly winning results it's stupid. Like I said before, Huntmaster is amazing, giving you a 2-3 for 1 even if they kill him right away. No card will auto win against it like graveyard hate against dredge, you just have to play with cards that have more inherent card advantage.

Finally, I would always take pro tour deck selection and whining with a grain of salt. These guys don't regularly go out of the box to pick a deck, and a lot of the time that's exactly what they should be doing. They'll play the same boring, safe decks that generally produce results around 50% and then complain about how boring the format is, instead of taking risks and playing lesser known decks. That's basically why Civka won, eggs isn't overpowered, it's just not well known among people who aren't playing modern frequently.

hi-val

10-26-2012, 03:06 PM

You haven't thought about that enough. Bloodbraid Elf and GSZ are terrible in the same deck, and it's not close. People tried Jund at the first Modern PT, and none played GSZ for obvious reasons, e.g.:

https://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/ptphi11/decksae

Look for Ryan Carpenter's or Andrea Casda's list.

Ah, you are so right. I concede the point.

For the record, I don't think unbanning anything is going to make the format more interesting for people who don't already play it. I don't see people saying "I would LOVE Modern except there's no Blazing Shoal! As soon as that's legal, I'll sleeve up a deck." The people who want to play Modern are playing it and an unbanning of JTMS or Skullclamp won't likely spice things up enough to get uninvolved people to engage.

Regarding "what do I side in against Jund?," there are plenty of goodies! PI just listed some great ones - Shackles is, indeed, the cat's ass against Jund. So is Celestial Purge, which rips out the most powerful portions of their deck. Jund is very, very creature-light in the sense that they only have a few dudes that can actually kill you. I was tearing up Jund with Path + Snapcaster, for example. At its core, it's just a mediocre grind deck with some broad options. It's got some expensive removal, expensive dudes and lands, and good discard. Killing 2-3 of their guys is really a fine strategy.

DragoFireheart

10-26-2012, 03:28 PM

Regarding "what do I side in against Jund?," there are plenty of goodies! PI just listed some great ones - Shackles is, indeed, the cat's ass against Jund. So is Celestial Purge, which rips out the most powerful portions of their deck. Jund is very, very creature-light in the sense that they only have a few dudes that can actually kill you. I was tearing up Jund with Path + Snapcaster, for example. At its core, it's just a mediocre grind deck with some broad options. It's got some expensive removal, expensive dudes and lands, and good discard. Killing 2-3 of their guys is really a fine strategy.

- Which is why things like Grim and Snappy are good choices.

ahg113

10-26-2012, 03:47 PM

"Modern looks like a diverse format because people show up with decks that look different, but many of them ultimately feel the same. It's still funny to me that cards like Wild Nacatl and Green Sun's Zenith are banned. The goal of banning Wild Nacatl was to increase the diversity of aggressive decks in the format. Where is that diversity?

I'll be playing in the upcoming Modern GP in Chicago, but I'm not excited about it. As it stands right now, all I want to do is play a deck designed to go toe-to-toe with Jund in resource exchange with a sideboard packed full of hate cards for the unfair decks. Maybe some kind of little kid G/W deck—who knows. I haven't started testing because I'm sick to death of the format.

I'm not sure what the best way to shake up Modern is, but I think unbanning Green Sun's Zenith is a good start. Don't worry—I'm not selfish. I could see Ancestral Visions, Jace, or Bitterblossom finding their way off the banned list as well. All I know is that something needs to happen because another tournament full of Jund and combo decks does not sound like my idea of a good time."

-Kibler

"As for Modern, I think it's a frustrating format. It looks relatively diverse because there are a lot of decks, but they're either extremely fragile unfair decks that can't beat a prepared opponent, or they're fair decks. The problem with the fair decks is that they're all basically the same. With no real card draw or library manipulation, every deck is forced to play an extremely similar curve and land ratio. You can basically choose whichever colors you want and play any of the "good cards" in those colors as long as you have a reasonable curve, but all the cards are mostly the same thing as all the other cards of their casting costs and the disruptive elements are strong enough that you can't play cards that are based on loose synergies.

Basically, I feel like the decks lack real identities and that the "good cards" have been played so much throughout history that it's all fairly bland."

-Sam Black

Given that these guys are pros, still not sure they know what they're talking about. I find RUG and U/W just as lame to play against in Legacy because they play FoW and Daze, but by no means are they the same decks. How can having a bunch of different decks not be diverse? When there are many differing things, how can this be homogenous?

Kibler's comment against a prepared opponent is silly. Even in sports, a prepared opponent is always more difficult to play against than an unprepared opponent. (Georgia Tech and Navy get wins because they play a rare and unique offense. If you have sub-standard players, no amount of prep will help because instinctively, they play football differently. However, if you have above average players with great sideline to sideline speed, a lil bit of studying and you can stymie the triple option.) And a lot of decks have an Achilles' heel, be it a piece of color hate (like Choke), Pithing Needle, Chalice of the Void, or xyz. Being fragile in one respect typically greatly pays off in another. (Looking at you Belcher, you wonderful glass cannon, you. Belcher goes BOOM!, but who's dead?)

Sam Black said there is no card draw- sleight of hand, telling time, think twice, serum visions, faithless looting, izzet charm, cryptic command, esper charm, all have the text "draw card(s)" on them (or put card into hand.) If these spells aren't as great as options in other formats (or compared to the banned list which is more appropriate), it's not lack of having the option, it's the efficiency of said option.

What is wrong with being able to pick "colors you want and play any of the 'good cards'"? This seems like flawed logic- I should only play certain colors, and mix good and bad cards.

I play bad cards in Legacy because it's a pet deck, and dammit, that's my choice. I also don't fully expect to win, but have no problem entering tourney's and wasting $30 for fun (because it's a game after all.) So in Legacy, is it incorrect to play good cards? Are the good cards not being "played so much throughout history that it's all fairly bland,"?

As hi-val said, those that are playing Modern and enjoy it like it the way it is. If you're not already onboard, unbanning Blazing Shoal* is not apt to whet your whistle and convert you to playing.

When there is a room full of RUG or some other U.dec (Merfolk, SnT, High Tide, U/W Miracles, U/W Control, my meta is full of tons and tons of U.decs), this is supposed to be diversity and fun?

Both pros come across whiny and vague. Most likely, the snippets (thank you for providing them to further the conversation TonyRo) don't do them complete justice in explaining their thoughts. Seeing as how I found my RtR product cheaper from another retailer, I did not get the gratis premium membership from SCG, and nor am I interested in paying for such content. I'm sure they've play tested a lot with friends and on-line to develop these well thought out treatise, but the quotes ring hollow for me.

Cheers,
Modern is fine

Megadeus

10-26-2012, 04:15 PM

ahg113

10-26-2012, 04:39 PM

Im not going to tell yoj that it is wrong to play your pet decks because they are what you want to play and ljke you saod you dont mind losing. Kibler and other pros play to win though and the fact that the choice to win is basically to play one of like 2 de ks is why the format is unhealthy and boring

They site combo and Jund as the reason the format is boring (generalizing.) They're trying to win, agreed. Why wouldn't they play a combo deck or Jund and go at it from there? If they want to play aggro, Affinity is a thing, and cranial plating is a beating.

Sam Black is playing a pet deck for all intents and purposes with R/B zombies in Legacy, but he's winning. Just him, other pilots aren't putting up significant numbers. So pet decks can work, with some hard work and innovation.

Where as control is a default in Legacy, combo is the default in Modern. Not liking combo doesn't make a format bad (=unhealthy and boring), makes it unliked. I don't like Standard, so I became a Modern player.

Lord Seth

10-26-2012, 10:54 PM

Ah, you are so right. I concede the point.

For the record, I don't think unbanning anything is going to make the format more interesting for people who don't already play it. I don't see people saying "I would LOVE Modern except there's no Blazing Shoal! As soon as that's legal, I'll sleeve up a deck."People might not be thinking of particular cards. But there are a lot of times I think of a cool idea for a Modern deck and then discover some important card is banned and have to abandon it.

The people who want to play Modern are playing it and an unbanning of JTMS or Skullclamp won't likely spice things up enough to get uninvolved people to engage.Wait, Skullclamp? Has anyone called for that to be unbanned? I've seen people suggesting Jace be unbanned, but Skullclamp? The card's not even legal in Legacy.

TonyRo

10-28-2012, 10:34 PM

Chapin's thoughts on Modern will be posted tomorrow on SCG. I can't link to the article yet. :rolleyes:

EDIT: Chapin on Modern (Premium) (http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/25096-Pack-Rat-Thundermaw-And-Unbanning-Modern.html)

ahg113

10-29-2012, 12:45 PM

So I should be happy that Hurricane Sandy isn't greatly affecting me, as I live in Philly and do not need to travel to Pittsburgh to get back to Philly. And, that Pack Rat is being complained about... that's all I get from SCG. If I remember, I'll attempt to respond in November.

Or...

You could write what thoughts were provoked by the article, and give your analysis of the given conversation.

Cheers,
I want Pack Rat to do something awesome with Necrotic Ooze... but what

TonyRo

10-29-2012, 02:44 PM

I don't understand what you're trying to say in your post. You're saying that you didn't read anything having to do with Modern in the article?

ahg113

10-29-2012, 03:15 PM

DragoFireheart

10-29-2012, 03:31 PM

Wait, Skullclamp? Has anyone called for that to be unbanned? I've seen people suggesting Jace be unbanned, but Skullclamp? The card's not even legal in Legacy.

- I think anyone with any semblance of sanity isn't suggesting for skullclamp to be unbanned. Only trolls and the mad would seriously consider unbanning that monstrosity.

ahg113

10-29-2012, 03:57 PM

- I think anyone with any semblance of sanity isn't suggesting for skullclamp to be unbanned. Only trolls and the mad would seriously consider unbanning that monstrosity.

It's a one mana common artifact. How bad could it be? It's not banned in EDH, totally safe I bet.

Cheers,
says the Toll Troll - It's Always Sunny

Megadeus

10-30-2012, 12:54 AM

It's a one mana common artifact. How bad could it be? It's not banned in EDH, totally safe I bet.

Cheers,
says the Toll Troll - It's Always Sunny

Worst troll post ever.

My nic fit deck dreams of the day I have T1 explorer into t2 skullclamp anx equip drawkng 2 and getting 2 untapped basics...

Lord Seth

10-30-2012, 01:37 AM

My snark was neither necessary, nor useful in conveying my point.

I was saying the article is not available for us non-paying stiffs (me.) However, as you think it is a valid source to reference to this discussion, I (haphazardly) suggested that you give your opinions of the article. Possibly highlight some of the main topic points, without reproducing the cited material, or otherwise infringing on the fair use of the article.Patrick Chapin says he thinks that there are too many unfair decks in Modern, and that there's too much degeneracy, especially without Force of Will holding things together. He says that, ideally, the way to go about fixing it would be to ban about 20 cards (not hyperbole--he says that straight up, and suggests banning "Lotus Bloom, Cranial Plating, Second Sunrise, Serum Visions, Snapcaster Mage, Gifts Ungiven, Gravecrawler, Dark Confidant, Goryo's Vengeance, Seething Song, Past in Flames, Splinter Twin, Kiki-Jiki the Mirror Breaker, Through the Breach, Life from the Loam, Birthing Pod, Inkmoth Nexus, Urza's Mine, Urza's Powerplant, Urza's Tower, and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle").

However, he admits that while he would prefer they do that, such a thing would be politically infeasible. So he instead advocates unbanning Bitterblossom, Jace, and Green Sun's Zenith while banning Dryad Arbor, Serum Visions, and Sleight of Hand (and possibly Dark Confidant), Dryad Arbor because it's too good with Green Sun's Zenith and the latter two because they enable unfair decks too much.

Another suggestion he has is to have a "rotating ban." I'm unsure of how to put it, so I'm just going to quote what he says (I think one paragraph should be okay to quote):
"Another possibility is to reimagine what the banned list means. What if Modern's banned list was less permanent than other formats? What if cards were banned somewhat aggressively but only temporarily? For instance, what if a few cards were unbanned and a dozen cards were banned, but at least half of those cards were unbanned next year? And when those cards are unbanned, some other cards are banned, but again only temporarily?"

So take all of that for whatever it's worth.

sco0ter

10-30-2012, 02:41 AM

Patrick Chapin says he thinks that there are too many unfair decks in Modern, and that there's too much degeneracy, especially without Force of Will holding things together. He says that, ideally, the way to go about fixing it would be to ban about 20 cards (not hyperbole--he says that straight up, and suggests banning "Lotus Bloom, Cranial Plating, Second Sunrise, Serum Visions, Snapcaster Mage, Gifts Ungiven, Gravecrawler, Dark Confidant, Goryo's Vengeance, Seething Song, Past in Flames, Splinter Twin, Kiki-Jiki the Mirror Breaker, Through the Breach, Life from the Loam, Birthing Pod, Inkmoth Nexus, Urza's Mine, Urza's Powerplant, Urza's Tower, and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle").

That sounds ridiculous. I never played Modern, but I follow the forums.
Is Modern really to unfair? Life from the Loam is unfair without Wasteland and cycle lands, really? Snapcaster Mage is very good, but doesn't make an unfair deck.
Cranial Plating is too unfair with all the artifact lands, Skullclamp and Vial being banned?
You don't need FoW in a format, who's fundamental turn is 4.

tsabo_tavoc

10-30-2012, 06:12 AM

Banning 20 cards is feasible, but not printing future cards in the similar calibre is not feasible. I tend to agree Ponder and Preordain are too good, but speaking about Serum Visions and Sleight of Hand being unfair is stretching the boundary too far, how about Opt, Peek, and Gitaxian Probe? I don't want cantrips in future sets as good as Ponder or Preordain, but devoiding MtG from 1-mana cantrips seems too harsh.

It is amusing that WotC wanted an Aggro format, and they have achieved that, but still think the Aggro decks look too similar. They banned Zoo's one drop, and people start to cry about Jund and Delver? Then something else banned, but how could it ever stop babies from crying? Bringing back one or more control cards would stir up the format enough. If I understand correctly, people would play eternal formats because it is more powerful than Standard.

TonyRo

10-30-2012, 08:59 AM

UnsungHero

10-30-2012, 01:08 PM

So much is backwards when people complain about the ban-list.
Unban this, but ban that. Totally see what TonyRo is saying.

Modern is a non-rotating watered down version of extended of yester-year. Extended wasn't all that popular, and but they banned all the cards that were good in extended, so we pretty much have the card pool of the very last extended format, minus all the good cards. I play modern, its not terrible, but the format isn't very interesting.

Lord Seth

10-30-2012, 04:02 PM

Does anyone get the thought that statements that you oft hear such as, "Ponder and Preordain are too good" and Chapin's "Ban Serum Visions and Sleight of Hand" mean the format is just effed up?I don't think Chapin advocating for their bans means the format is "effed up," I think it just means his suggestion to ban them is "effed up." In fact, he might be the first person I've seen make that claim. Usually people either are neutral on the current state of 1-mana cantrips in Modern or think the opposite of what he's advocating. For example, Sam Black complained that the library manipulation/draw in the format wasn't good enough.

TeenieBopper

10-30-2012, 08:29 PM

That sounds ridiculous. I never played Modern, but I follow the forums.
Is Modern really to unfair? Life from the Loam is unfair without Wasteland and cycle lands, really? Snapcaster Mage is very good, but doesn't make an unfair deck.
Cranial Plating is too unfair with all the artifact lands, Skullclamp and Vial being banned?
You don't need FoW in a format, who's fundamental turn is 4.

When pros talk about unfair decks, they're not saying the deck is too powerful. Fair decks are ones that act on a traditional axis and interacts with the opponent. Unfair decks are ones that don't. Zoo and Jund are fair decks. Second Sunrise combo isn't. More importantly, a deck like Illusions/Donate, while a terrible deck, is still an unfair deck. He acknowledged that affinity is something of a weird case; it interacts with your opponent, but that the answers that affinity requires are so specific that the deck borders on unfair.

Also, for the record, looking at the DTB forum the fundamental turn in Legacy is about turn 4 too. Just throwing that out there.

For example, Sam Black complained that the library manipulation/draw in the format wasn't good enough.

Which is actually a facet of a different argument that's tangentally related; should WotC ban the broken decks/cards, or should they ban the enablers? A part of me wonders what would happen if WotC banned Tron, Spinter Twin, Second Sunrise (and some other cards from Chapin's list), and nuked Storm from orbit, and then umbanned ponder and/or preordain, what the format would look like.

Then again, it could just be that for any Eternal format, be it Vintage, Legacy, or Modern, a card like Force of Will is crucial. Even in Modern, with a card pool a quarter the size of Legacy, there are simply too many interactions and Force of Will is needed to keep those interactions in check.

Jamaican Zombie Legend

10-30-2012, 08:59 PM

Does anyone get the thought that statements that you oft hear such as, "Ponder and Preordain are too good" and Chapin's "Ban Serum Visions and Sleight of Hand" mean the format is just effed up? When Preordain is too good in an eternal, non-rotating format, you're already walking down the wrong path in my opinion.

Wizards has their work cut out for them with Modern. They've never seriously managed an eternal format before; EDH is outsourced, Legacy is managed less by WotC and more by Force/Wasteland, and from what I hear, their tweaks to Vintage have been catastrophic and hurt the format a lot. Modern won't be a '"set it and forget it" format like Legacy, it doesn't have the card depth and archetype diversity to self-correct as well as Legacy can. I don't think Wizards is up to this challenge though, which is why I think Modern is going to struggle a lot. It has a lot of potential, but I don't think the current Wizards philosophy of format management is going to be able to get much out of it.

The biggest three issues facing Modern are probably:

-Insufficient non-basic land hate: TecEdge, Ghost Quarter, Blood Moon, and Fulminator Mage just aren't good enough against things like Tron and Scapeshift, and greedy manabases are just far too secure. There needs to be either some sort of ubiquitous answer to problem non-basics in the vein of Wasteland or good enough specialized hate to come out of the sideboard that is absolutely devastating. Take gravehate as an example. There are cards that absolutely wreck graveyard strategies and they come in many variations to fit in many kinds of decks. There is nothing nearly comparable to this in the realm of dealing with non-basics in Modern, yet decks in Modern utilize with non-basics to as devastating an effect as the graveyard.

-Not enough variance reducers: You need consistency in an Eternal format for a few reasons. One, the fundamental turn is lower; you have less time to do things and need to make every play count, and variance hurts a lot more because of this. The other main reason is in sideboarding. Fifteen cards is often scarcely enough when you can be attacked by so many different strategies. But without good variance reducers, that space is essentially "shrunk". You can get a lot more out of your 15 when you have cantrips, tutors, dig spells, and the like. We see this in Legacy, as practically every archetype has some at least a couple methods of getting the cards they need, when they need them. Even the mono-red tribal deck has Goblin Matron and Goblin Ringleader to get stuff. Modern...doesn't really have that, and that's a problem in a format full of varied "unfair" decks.

-Wizards has an overly simplistic view of combo: When they ban/don't ban combo solely on the "Modern is a turn four format", it shows how simple their views on combo are. There's more to combo than speed; resilience, skill barrier, meta position, etc. A combo that goes off turn 2, but is easily disrupted by just about anything is probably a lot less dangerous than something like Eggs, which while not as fast, is a lot harder to interact with for a lot of decks. Essentially by banning all the "fast" combo, they leave only the more resilient, harder to interact ones around, shaping the meta in a direction they probably didn't intend.

I think these three issues are the most significant explanatory factors of why the Modern meta is pretty much comprised of aggro (Affinity, Tokens, Lifegain), midrange goodstuff (Jund, U/W Resto), and "combo" (Tron, Scapeshift, Twin, Pod, Storm, Eggs); a state that a lot of people find pretty unsatisfactory.

And in case anyone thinks Wizards knows what they're doing, here's a discomforting litttle tidbit. Wizards has ceased publishing MTGO Daily results citing (when prodded; they tried to slip this under the rug):

http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75846/29443457/What_is_WRONG_with_you,_WotC_Grrrr.....?pg=2

In regards to the recent reduced event coverage, this was a conscious decision by the Wizards R&D team that wasn’t made lightly. Ultimately, we feel that publishing every deck list leads to solving constructed formats far too efficiently, resulting in early stagnation that’s not fun for anybody. We still want to show new deck ideas every day and provide insight into the Magic play environment, but we don’t want metagame development to become purely a function of data analysis. Going forward, we’ll still provide the winning deck lists from all Premier Event top 8’s. We will also show the 4-0 and 3-1 deck lists for one completed Daily Event in each format per day.

Translation: Standard and Block Constructed have been utter shit lately, so rather than fess up to the fact we've made some big mistakes, let's screw everyone out of valuable information to try and reduce the impact of R&D's poor recent performance in designing/developing for tournament players. I wonder if this was one of LaPille's welcome back decisions....

TonyRo

10-30-2012, 09:20 PM

I essentially agree that one of the fundamental flaws is that there's no "check" cards like Wasteland and FoW in the format. Some sort of generic non-basic hate in between Ghost Quarter/Tec Edge and Wasteland would be nice, and some cards that are reasonable against fast combo decks seems better for the format than dropping the banhammer on cards like Glimpse, Rite of Flame, Ponder, and so forth. I'd rather have strong cards with check and balances than have a lot of interesting decks' existence sweeped off the map with a banhammer.

All that said, I love how wide open Legacy is, and I do understand if some people are in Modern for something other than a "light" version of Legacy. Nor would I argue with people who think this is not possible.

Lord Seth

10-30-2012, 10:03 PM

They could try reprinting Foil. It's no Force of Will, but then again Modern isn't as powerful of a format and a weaker substitute may be able to fill a similar role.

Though one thing I hate about Foil is that when you try to search for it, you just end up with a bunch of different foil cards.

ahg113

10-31-2012, 11:59 AM

Worst troll post ever.

My nic fit deck dreams of the day I have T1 explorer into t2 skullclamp anx equip drawkng 2 and getting 2 untapped basics...

Are you trolling my trolling? Or... are you giving me a backhand compliment? Is the double negative (under the assumption trolls are negative) in effect, therefore making it neutral/positive?

That would be a pretty sweet line of play. Obviously Explorer is over powered and should be banned. D'uh.

Cheers,
three billy goats gruff say what?

ahg113

10-31-2012, 12:36 PM

Thank you for the synopsis Lord Seth.

In regards to Chapin's article, I agree and disagree. The rotating ban list is just a headache. I don't think any of us are inherently lazy, but keeping track of a rotating ban list is a pain. Not to mention the ripping apart of decks to remake etc. etc. Blah.

To the jist of Chapin's thoughts though, I understand his desire to limit the number of "unfair" decks. My "line-in-the-sand" is "unfair" decks are totally legit and fine to play. Whereas Chapin advocates to further limit U cantrips, and Black/Kibler think there should be more U cantrips, I don't care either way.
Variance is part of the game, if players are forced to live with it, adapt or die. I greatly enjoy playing a U/R sligh type deck, that uses U cantrips to hearts content. But that's aggro, and if it weren't available, I'd just replace it with more aggro. However, the reduction of U cantrips would hurt combo, which is fine, work with what you got. Likewise, the increase of U cantrips would aid control, don't really care to see that, but such is life.

I disagree that the format needs FoW, or a functional free counterspell. Unless similar type powerful effects are going to be printed for the other colors- the way they did Pacts in Future Sight- I find no reason to give U a decided edge over the other colors.

Per Jamacian Zombie Legend- I think these three issues are the most significant explanatory factors of why the Modern meta is pretty much comprised of aggro (Affinity, Tokens, Lifegain), midrange goodstuff (Jund, U/W Resto), and "combo" (Tron, Scapeshift, Twin, Pod, Storm, Eggs);

That list all the colors, fairly represented, maybe White takes first, followed by Green/Blue. Now, looking at Legacy, how evenly distributed are the colors in the game? I'm speculating, not assuming, that green is underrepresented, along with red, and blue is the vast color of the majority.

I dunno what I'm arguing about anymore- I'd be sad if Chapin's proposed increased 20 card ban was envoked, obviously because I own (or just bought) some of those cards, but I'd suck it up anyway. I think the format is fine. If you're worried about Eggs or Storm, pack more Relic of Progenitus. Any of the creature related items, pack more Sudden Spoiling. There are answers out there for Twin.

If non-basic lands are a problem (thanks to SCG-Advanced Search):
Anathemancer
Blood Moon
Detritivore
Dryad Sophisticate
Fissure Vent
Fulminator Mage
Goblin Ruinblaster
Helldozer
Incendiary Command
Magus of the Moon
Molten Rain
Ore Gorger
Sowing Salt
Tectonic Edge
Trailblazer's Boots
Weight of Spires
Wilderness Elemental

I'd be all for a reprint of Price of Progress and of Dust Bowl. And to get more mileage out of Ghost Quarter and Tectonic Edge, there's always Crucible of World.

Cheers,
You gotta pay the Troll Toll
If You Wanna Get Into That Boy's Soul
You gotta pay the Troll Toll
To get in!

You want the baby boy's soul

You gotta pay the Troll Toll
You gotta pay the Troll Toll
To get in!

Troll Toll!

Lord Seth

10-31-2012, 01:59 PM

TonyRo

10-31-2012, 02:08 PM

I disagree that the format needs FoW, or a functional free counterspell. Unless similar type powerful effects are going to be printed for the other colors- the way they did Pacts in Future Sight- I find no reason to give U a decided edge over the other colors.

I'm not arguing that Modern needs a functional FoW (perhaps it does, I don't know), but I do know that your explanation of why U shouldn't get one makes no sense. Some colors are better at others at doing things. Green has always been shit against combo. If you're Mono-Green, you probably lose to combo, and that's how it is. Same with red. On the other hand, UB, and to a certain extent White, have always had tools there.

Want to blow up an artifact - hope you're not in UB. Want targeted discard? Black's your man.

You can't call for the abolishment of the color pie - that's Magic brother.

Also, I'd say about 95% of the cards you listed as Non-basic hate are garbage, and not scary to any of the decks that you'd want to play them against. Wasteland keeps Legacy in check in part because a fair amount of the format wants the card.

ahg113

10-31-2012, 02:20 PM

I wonder if Golgari Grave-Troll and Dread Return could be unbanned. Dredge doesn't have some of its powerful cards (Cabal Therapy, Ichorid, Lion's Eye Diamond) in Modern while the grave hate is just as good (seriously, I can't think of a single good anti-graveyard card in Legacy that isn't also in Modern). When they banned it Wizards claimed it could pull off turn 3 kills with them, but I don't really see how outside of extraordinary luck.

Based off of the unfair, uninteractive decks already seeing play, I agree with you Lord Seth. The two cards should come off the ban-list. If storm is allowable (a niche mechanic that builds a deck unto itself), then I don't see why dredge shouldn't be allowable. I'm not as wild about allowing Dread Return, the no mana cost bothers me for some reason. There isn't a real alternative, Doomed Necromancer the most likely, or also found, Unburial Rites, Vigor Mortis and Hell's Caretaker.
The Grave-Troll is legit in my mind, an enabler and vanilla fatty.

Both are open to a lot of hate.

ahg113

10-31-2012, 02:27 PM

I'm not arguing that Modern needs a functional FoW (perhaps it does, I don't know), but I do know that your explanation of why U shouldn't get one makes no sense. Some colors are better at others at doing things. Green has always been shit against combo. If you're Mono-Green, you probably lose to combo, and that's how it is. Same with red. On the other hand, UB, and to a certain extent White, have always had tools there.

Want to blow up an artifact - hope you're not in UB. Want targeted discard? Black's your man.

You can't call for the abolishment of the color pie - that's Magic brother.

Also, I'd say about 95% of the cards you listed as Non-basic hate are garbage, and not scary to any of the decks that you'd want to play them against. Wasteland keeps Legacy in check in part because a fair amount of the format wants the card.

I'm not trying to abolish the color wheel, I'm trying to prevent free spells. I just said if U gets a free spell, the other colors should as well, not that Green needed it's own force of will. I mentioned the Pact's, because as I recall, that was a cycle of free spells that all the colors received. To that effect... why don't more blue decks play Pact of Negation? Plan ahead with ramp, or leave the mana open for your upkeep, etc. etc. Anyway...

The cards I mentioned are answers to problems, whether or not they be the best or most efficient. The innovation is making those sucky options more tolerable to answer the sucky position you're in because of nonbasic lands. If you have a problem with nonbasics, pleading with Wizards to hold your hand isn't the best recourse.

Cheers,
drink your milk, say your prayers, and do your homework

Jodahae

10-31-2012, 03:22 PM

Consider for a moment that if modern where looking for a Fow replacement all its own it actually only needs to print a small variation on a card which is already in the format. Currently if they where to adapt the text X or less to the end of Disrupting Shoal it would allow this near functional reprint to act as the psuedo force that modern needs.

This would allow you pitch Shoal to a Shoal to allow you to cover spells two cmc or less, which would be the vast majority of spells in the early game. Moving into the midgame though one would be required to expand the cmc of playable cards in their deck to keep up with trying to counter spells such as Scapeshift, Past in Flames or Second Sunrise.

Its just my two cent.

Phoenix Ignition

10-31-2012, 03:57 PM

I'm honestly confused why the pros are complaining about the format so much. It's really a diverse format, even if you look at the pro tour top 8 you can see more diversity than most Standard top 8s. There are archetypes that are very different and with different playstyles for each one, and out of them I think the pros picked one of the worst ones to single out. Why people listen to them in the first place is interesting to me -- they spend relatively no time on the format, look at it right before each major event they're playing it in, choose a low-risk deck that they think they'll be able to pilot into first place, and then single out the "rock" deck of modern (Jund) as the thing that needs to change?

People are saying it's a boring format, but most of this is based off of stagnancy in decks that is propagated through pro tournaments. I'm excited to see people use different decks for GP Chicago. Many will pick ~50% every matchup decks like Jund, but I think we'll see more than just that.

As for more bannings and unbannings, I'm really against a rotating ban list. The arguments of people about "I just bought that card" are pretty weak, I only really care about the format health. Rotating ban list will jumble decks up, but not in a good way. Deck building in Legacy is interesting because people have so much time to really test out cards in decks, and come up with the most optimal versions of a specific deck type. In Modern we've only really seen Extended ports into Modern doing well, but a large part of that is due to the amount of time it takes to polish a deck. Unpolished decks can lose games due to a single card not being optimal, and until enough time has been invested into it, certain decks will stay under the radar.

I don't care much about blue cantrips. They are pretty degenerate, almost no decks other than combo depend on them. Most decks that use them are doing broken things, and the ones that aren't could replace them pretty easily. I'm not necessarily for their banning since the power level of the still existing ones is pretty low, but overall if we wanted a format without blue splashed into every combo, this would be a fine way to do it. I think these decks are kept in check enough by just running more graveyard hate.

Nonbasic hate needs to be better. Tec edge is basically the only one that has a good enough effect to play, but it doesn't answer Tron before they get going. Paying 3 for a land destruction spell just isn't good enough when they can drop a Karn on turn 3. Wasteland and Dust Bowl are too good for the format, but something like Price of Progress or Sinkhole-against-nonbasics or Vindicate reprint would help. Blood Moon effects don't really hurt anyone but Jund, since Tron can usually just blow it up with something, or play all their colorless spells anyway. Even Sowing Salt doesn't do enough against them.

cartoonist

10-31-2012, 11:46 PM

The biggest issue I think that Modern faces is a lack of powerful, competitive control decks. Aggro and combo are very well represented, and tempo is thriving. Control...not so much. The healthiest formats have all three strategies represented by viable decks. U/W has been getting some interesting toys, but that seems like the only way to go.

I've been trying to build a classic B/G Rock-style deck, utilizing the synergy of Grisley Salvage and Tombstalker. It doesn't help that the best disruption for that strategy - Thoughtseize - is overpriced significantly. It's the lack of other removal and disruption that keeps doing me in. Abrupt Decay is great, but I'm not stopping Kiki from going off with it, nor will I bother Eggs with it. Right now the split second cards look like the best options now, but that's just not enough.

That's two possibilities. Any other viable control ideas? No?

Print some serious disruption, and then you'll really shake the format up.

Phoenix Ignition

11-01-2012, 12:08 AM

Admiral_Arzar

11-01-2012, 09:37 AM

TeenieBopper

11-01-2012, 11:31 AM

How is Shouta Yasooka's deck (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/tpc12/moderndecks) not a control deck? It runs 3 Tarmogoyf, sure, but a deck that expects to get at least 6 mana in a game and plays 4 Cryptic Command surely cannot be described as tempo. It is a very viable, very good control deck, and he was 1 game away from winning the Players Championship with it.

I swear, no one pays attention to the format, everyone just assumes that whatever happened at the last big event is the only thing that has ever happened.

Yasooka's deck was an anomaly. He was going into a peculiar tournament where he knew exactly who the players were going to be as well as being able to make educated guesses about what they were going to play. How well did Yasooka's deck do in Seattle? Furthermore, how well do you expect it to do in Chicago?

Honestly, the majority of the complaints and suggested changes for the modern banlist over the last couple of pages boil down to a couple of things:

1. Disbelief that U is not by far the best color in the format
2. Disbelief that there aren't multiple playable free counterspells (see #1)
3. Disbelief that there isn't incredibly overpowered nonbasic hate (besides Blood Moon, but that requires red and nobody likes that color)

These are three of the reasons that the Legacy scene where I live is starting to shift towards modern. The format allows you to play fun things you'd never get away with in Legacy (Urzatron, 5-color manabases), and also prevents you from having to deal with an endless sea of U/G/x tempo decks, counter-top, SnT.dec, etc. The lack of FOW and Wasteland in Modern is a pro, not a con, and I'm pretty sure it's going to stay that way.

You're completely illiterate. That's exactly not what the complaints are about.

ahg113

11-01-2012, 11:55 AM

Honestly, the majority of the complaints and suggested changes for the modern banlist over the last couple of pages boil down to a couple of things:

1. Disbelief that U is not by far the best color in the format
2. Disbelief that there aren't multiple playable free counterspells (see #1)
3. Disbelief that there isn't incredibly overpowered nonbasic hate (besides Blood Moon, but that requires red and nobody likes that color)

These are three of the reasons that the Legacy scene where I live is starting to shift towards modern. The format allows you to play fun things you'd never get away with in Legacy (Urzatron, 5-color manabases), and also prevents you from having to deal with an endless sea of U/G/x tempo decks, counter-top, SnT.dec, etc. The lack of FOW and Wasteland in Modern is a pro, not a con, and I'm pretty sure it's going to stay that way.

+1

@Phoenix Ignition: +1

@cartoonist: there is a lack of draw-go control. There are other zones to interact with than just the stack and those decks are playable. If you're looking for something to take care of Kiki-Jiki, sudden spoiling works great, follow that up with another spell kill spell. Alternatively, maybe like memorcide/slaughter games will solve the problem before it occurs. Those are both 4 drops, and should hit a turn before Kiki-Jiki as a 5 drop. the lack of draw-go control isn't a problem.

How many honest non-control aggro decks are there in Legacy? Robots and _? If Tempo isn't a "control deck" then I am misunderstanding the use of counterspells and removal in that shell.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, mono-B discard is a great control deck in Modern. Lily is a beating, Bob is fantastic, and hidden gem Nyxathrid is a great finisher, Funeral Charm is my 4th favorite card in that deck.

Lord Seth

11-01-2012, 02:29 PM

How many honest non-control aggro decks are there in Legacy? Robots and _?Goblins and Burn come to mind immediately. Zombies is a bit fringe, but would seem to qualify. Maverick is one of the most popular decks in the format.

Fizzeler

11-01-2012, 04:09 PM

Goblins and Burn come to mind immediately. Zombies is a bit fringe, but would seem to qualify. Maverick is one of the most popular decks in the format.

And many Stompy Decks (Infect Stompy, 9 Land Stompy, etc) are all considered aggro are they not?

ahg113

11-01-2012, 05:04 PM

Goblins and Burn come to mind immediately. Zombies is a bit fringe, but would seem to qualify. Maverick is one of the most popular decks in the format.

Goblins is as much a combo deck as it is aggro deck. Between Tutors, cheat-into-play, and draw spells, the effects of those abilities do not say aggro at all. If a deck can beat Moat not having any fliers in the deck using creatures, it's more than just aggro.

Burn is aggro yes. Not the typical creature based though. Regardless, I'll give it to you.

Zombies is a pet deck, successfully piloted by one pro, and one-offs of smaller tournaments. I don't qualify it.

Maverick is an aggro-control (or is that control-aggro?) deck, with tutor, LD, disruption & removal galore.

Poison Stompy I'll give ya. It's more fringe than whoa, but it exist. (Just like control in Modern.)

9 Land Stompy, I have not seen this recently/in this meta. Quick google search and this is the first deck that pops up from this forum - http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?3871-Deck-9-Land-Stompy/page5

The last posting was in 2006. I purposely didn't say Zoo, and I think others did likewise, because that is a dead deck right now. For the sake of this discussion, I think 9 Land Stompy, or Beserk Stompy variants are dead decks as well.

TLDR: Goblins, Maverick - no. Burn, Poison - a-typical, but why not. Zombies - DNQ. Stompy - DOA.

Cheers,
hence my qualifier of "honest non-control"

Fizzeler

11-01-2012, 06:23 PM

I was saying there are many decks you have missed that classify as just straight Aggro in Legacy

Hexproof Stompy is still a deck

Goblins is a deck that is hard to classify outside of Tribal for me it can control the board, cheat things into play and just beat face all I know is get Tabernacle ASAP

In terms of actually discussing Modern, I think they should start removing things, Golgari Grave-Troll without Dread Return seems okay, it may make Dredgevine more consistent, but Dredge still wouldn't be a deck as you don't have Cabal Therapy, Ichorid, LED, Breakthrough, Careful Study, or Dread Return

I would say Ancestral Visions as well to help control decks, for this same reason Sword Of The Meek to give these control decks a finisher (that and the combo isn't even that powerful)

I am fine with good cantrips being banned for reason of controlling combo, but unban Preordain, it may be better than Serum Visions, but it is not nearly as strong as Ponder or Brainstorm

Dark Depths is banned because it is a two card combo that you can get out on turn 2 yes?

Lord Seth

11-01-2012, 08:02 PM

Goblins is as much a combo deck as it is aggro deck. Between Tutors, cheat-into-play, and draw spells, the effects of those abilities do not say aggro at all.I don't see how any aren't aggro other than perhaps the tutor, and even that's still a creature who can attack (and it just serves to get you more stuff to pound the opponent with). Just because Goblins is better at "reloading" than most aggro decks doesn't mean it's not an aggro deck.

Also, you cited Affinity as an aggro deck. Affinity can have those things you just described (Thoughtcast, Stoneforge Mystic).

If a deck can beat Moat not having any fliers in the deck using creatures, it's more than just aggro.How? You beat Moat by sacrificing creatures to Siege-Gang Commander to kill your opponent. That's still perfectly aggro. What's non-aggro about it?

Zombies is a pet deck, successfully piloted by one pro, and one-offs of smaller tournaments. I don't qualify it.It's had multiple top 8's in big tournaments. It counts.

Maverick is an aggro-control (or is that control-aggro?) deck, with tutor, LD, disruption & removal galore.I'm not sure how that makes it a non-aggro deck. I mean, Zoo plays removal (Swords to Plowshares), disruption (Thalia), and land destruction (Wasteland). I don't think Green Sun's Zenith can really disqualify it, especially because it's used to get creatures to be aggro with anyway.

The last posting was in 2006. I purposely didn't say Zoo, and I think others did likewise, because that is a dead deck right now.It got 2nd place at a the Legacy Championship. I'd certainly call it fringe, but it is hardly dead.

Phoenix Ignition

11-01-2012, 10:40 PM

Yasooka's deck was an anomaly. He was going into a peculiar tournament where he knew exactly who the players were going to be as well as being able to make educated guesses about what they were going to play. How well did Yasooka's deck do in Seattle? Furthermore, how well do you expect it to do in Chicago?
He was playing against: Affinity, UWR delver, RUG delver, and Jund. Is it any different than what you'd expect anywhere else? His deck wasn't an anomaly, it really is good and the hate against it isn't. Basically Extirpate/Surgical is the best bet against it, but in that case you have to be running those cards (which we can all agree are less than ideal).

I expect it to do well in Chicago, I've played with that deck and it's really damn good. This is assuming enough percentage of players are going to use it and give it a chance at top 8ing. But honestly with all I've been reading, people are lazy and will pick Jund because they don't know better.

Fizzeler

11-01-2012, 11:17 PM

He was playing against: Affinity, UWR delver, RUG delver, and Jund. Is it any different than what you'd expect anywhere else? His deck wasn't an anomaly, it really is good and the hate against it isn't. Basically Extirpate/Surgical is the best bet against it, but in that case you have to be running those cards (which we can all agree are less than ideal).

I expect it to do well in Chicago, I've played with that deck and it's really damn good. This is assuming enough percentage of players are going to use it and give it a chance at top 8ing. But honestly with all I've been reading, people are lazy and will pick Jund because they don't know better.

Or we see more combo decks because everyone thinks everyone else is on Jund so they just try to be faster and and sideboard leylines

Yasookas deck is well yeah an anomaly it is decent vs Aggro decks, but like was shown at the PT combo is a thing

Phoenix Ignition

11-02-2012, 02:06 AM

Or we see more combo decks because everyone thinks everyone else is on Jund so they just try to be faster and and sideboard leylines

Yasookas deck is well yeah an anomaly it is decent vs Aggro decks, but like was shown at the PT combo is a thing
Okay... but Yasooka's deck runs 3 Mana Leak, 2 remand, 3 spell snare, 4 cryptic command, and 2 spell pierce side. I don't think combo is going to have the easiest time in the world.

ahg113

11-02-2012, 10:32 AM

@Lord Seth & Fizzeler: The point I was making is that in Legacy, the three basic pillars aren't as clear cut as it would proposed and represented that those pillars are absent in Modern. The forms the pillars take is vastly different from each other. Goblins is an aggressive deck- it trys to cast spells, put dudes in play every turn, and it attacks as much as possible. It uses a lot of the same tools that can be found in control to do so. That's atypical, and it's ok. The "lacking" pieces of Modern are present, they're just atypical, and that's ok too.

The weird constraint put on the "aggro" query for Legacy was intended to show that there aren't many STOMPY (Green or Dragon) decks out there because it's not optimal to play them, usually. However, they do exist, and as I've been recently learned, one of them had a better than bad showing just recently. No the typical control deck may not be present, but that doesn't mean that there are no control decks. That seems to be the biggest argument against Modern at the moment, that and the ban list makes no sense.

(What MtG list does make sense? Reserve, banned, restricted?)

In so much that in Legacy, the pillars are all composite. They're ornate, well thought out, intricate well designed objects.

In Modern, the pillars are a mix of corithian and ionic. They're not as pretty as Legacy, but the pillars are still there.

(Expanding on my analogy-)
With the requisite number of pillars present, the roof stands. With a good roof overhead, I believe the format is fine.

Cheers,
circular logic

TeenieBopper

11-02-2012, 09:30 PM

He was playing against: Affinity, UWR delver, RUG delver, and Jund. Is it any different than what you'd expect anywhere else? His deck wasn't an anomaly, it really is good and the hate against it isn't. Basically Extirpate/Surgical is the best bet against it, but in that case you have to be running those cards (which we can all agree are less than ideal).

I expect it to do well in Chicago, I've played with that deck and it's really damn good. This is assuming enough percentage of players are going to use it and give it a chance at top 8ing. But honestly with all I've been reading, people are lazy and will pick Jund because they don't know better.

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/ptrtr12/topmoderndecks

There was one person who went 6-2 or better with Yasooka's deck in Seattle. To put that in perspective, more people did better with merfolk than did better with Yasooka's deck. There were five people in the entire tournament who played it. You think it was because the other 378 players, including most (if not all) of the best players in the world, were just lazy? Please.

Phoenix Ignition

11-03-2012, 02:23 AM

1 in 5 people to play the deck did very well with it? That's pretty low numbers to try to do meaningful statistics with, but still better than 0. I never said it was the best deck ever created, I said it is a good control deck. If you want to get in a fight over it, though, I'm less than interested and will just be waiting for results instead of silly arguments.

TeenieBopper

11-03-2012, 10:51 AM

Right. Because a list of 6-2 decks at the Pro Tour aren't results.

Also: No pros are playing it in Lyons: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gplyo12/welcome#7 . Granted, this doesn't automatically mean it won't make day 2, or that it won't top 8. But if nobody is playing it, odds are it isn't very good for a large, open tournament like a PT or GP.

None of the grinders were won with it, either: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gplyo12/welcome#2

Not a single copy of Yasooka's deck made day 2 in Lyons: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gplyo12/day2#3

Mr. Safety

11-10-2012, 10:50 AM

I've been thinking about modern quite a bit lately, and I'd like to throw out an idea for folks:

Would a reprint of Wasteland be what 'true' control needs to be viable in modern? I know that tempo-based aggro/control decks would jump on it as well, probably most decks would (just like legacy.) It makes cards like Spell Pierce and Mana Leak much better in the format, which I would think would naturally lead several high-rolling competitive players to attempt a control deck. Why true control over aggro/control? All you need is a way to deal with early threats, trim back the greedy mana-base, then bring in a card advantage engine to establish inevitability. In particular I would see cards like Supreme Verdict and Detention Sphere enabling a strong control deck in modern, if provided with Wasteland.

Theoretical playables for a hard control list (really short on time, it's a start):

Supreme Verdict
Detention Sphere
Elspeth, Knight Errant
Compulsive Research
Bant Charm
Tarmogoyf
mana Leak
Spell Pierce
Serum Visions

Looking for feedback...don't be afraid to call me nuts! It's just a thought, like throwing a pile of stuff against a wall. Sometimes, some of it sticks.

DragoFireheart

12-18-2012, 12:05 PM

I hate Serum Visions so much. It's just so awful at being a cantrip: you draw something you most likely need while you get to torment yourself over two cards you most likely need.

Zeckk

12-24-2012, 06:08 AM

SpikeyMikey

12-24-2012, 09:24 AM

Without the suite of countermagic and combo speed that defines legacy, I fear that wasteland would warp the meta to the point of being nearly unrecognizable.

That's not a bad thing. It would make it much easier for fair decks to beat Tron, possibly removing it from the field entirely (which I am VERY ok with). It would seriously hamper 4c Jund. It would make tempo decks playable. Which of those things would you have a problem with?

Phoenix Ignition

12-24-2012, 08:07 PM

That's not a bad thing. It would make it much easier for fair decks to beat Tron, possibly removing it from the field entirely (which I am VERY ok with). It would seriously hamper 4c Jund. It would make tempo decks playable. Which of those things would you have a problem with?

I don't have a problem with the 3 changes you noted but I would have a problem with the format other than these changes. Modern doesn't have the card filtering or low mana cost bombs that other formats can get by on. Brainstorm, free spells like Force + Daze, things like Sensei's Divining top, even Stoneforge Mystic and GSZ, make Legacy a format that is capable of playing entire matches where neither side needs to hit more than 3 lands per game. Introducing Wasteland to the format not only cuts down the top playable cmc of the format by attrition, it adds a variance that I think both competitive and less-so players would all hate. You keep a 3-lander and get Wasted down to 2 or 1 and you have nothing to help you out. It wouldn't even hurt many of the unfair decks in the format like UR storm, eggs, and splinter twin.

While I think there should be more nonbasic hate in the format, and think Tron as a deck is terribly boring in concept and to play against, I can't help but think a free nonbasic kill spell isn't what would balance this out. There are greedy manabases now like 4c Jund that have no reason to not run 4c, so I hope they print something to combat things like that, but Wasteland is just too powerful. Something like Back to Basics would be the best, since it's arguably less powerful than Blood Moon but gives more colors the option of making everyone be honest with their manabases. I would say Price of Progress, but that would be too strong with only shock duals. Perhaps a white hatebear that has a similar ability of Back to Basics.

DragoFireheart

12-26-2012, 10:05 AM

We have Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon that are modern legal. Also, modern isn't legacy and there is a very real price in having so many colors: more self-inflicted damage.

Amon Amarth

12-29-2012, 05:27 AM

I don't have a problem with the 3 changes you noted but I would have a problem with the format other than these changes. Modern doesn't have the card filtering or low mana cost bombs that other formats can get by on. Brainstorm, free spells like Force + Daze, things like Sensei's Divining top, even Stoneforge Mystic and GSZ, make Legacy a format that is capable of playing entire matches where neither side needs to hit more than 3 lands per game. Introducing Wasteland to the format not only cuts down the top playable cmc of the format by attrition, it adds a variance that I think both competitive and less-so players would all hate. You keep a 3-lander and get Wasted down to 2 or 1 and you have nothing to help you out. It wouldn't even hurt many of the unfair decks in the format like UR storm, eggs, and splinter twin.

While I think there should be more nonbasic hate in the format, and think Tron as a deck is terribly boring in concept and to play against, I can't help but think a free nonbasic kill spell isn't what would balance this out. There are greedy manabases now like 4c Jund that have no reason to not run 4c, so I hope they print something to combat things like that, but Wasteland is just too powerful. Something like Back to Basics would be the best, since it's arguably less powerful than Blood Moon but gives more colors the option of making everyone be honest with their manabases. I would say Price of Progress, but that would be too strong with only shock duals. Perhaps a white hatebear that has a similar ability of Back to Basics.

I agree with this. Wasteland is too strong for Modern but there definitely needs to be some playable nonbasic hate. I think Dust Bowl is that card. It's powerful but slow; you can't use it before turn four. Repeatable but there is a real cost. It even seems possible for a reprint in some Standard format, no this one though.

DragoFireheart

12-29-2012, 09:37 AM

How about just reprinting Price of Progress? Can't use it in Jund without killing yourself, gives red a role as anti-multi-color deck, and helps tone down jund?

JDK

12-29-2012, 09:55 AM

Reprint PoP and Burn breaks loose.

bruizar

12-29-2012, 10:02 AM

i already speculated on the non-basic non-ravnica duals because of the lack of land hate. Academy Ruins is really good without waste for example

(nameless one)

12-29-2012, 01:48 PM

I agree with this. Wasteland is too strong for Modern but there definitely needs to be some playable nonbasic hate. I think Dust Bowl is that card. It's powerful but slow; you can't use it before turn four. Repeatable but there is a real cost. It even seems possible for a reprint in some Standard format, no this one though.

With this principle, Tectonic Edge is playable then.

Mr. Safety

12-30-2012, 08:23 PM

And truthfully, Tectonic Edge is near UN-playable. If I'm going for Tron hate (in the form of land) I'm going for Ghost Quarter.

Wasteland is safe for Modern, I think. I think the worst that would happen is that folks would have to play the appropriate amount of land, put more basics in the mix, and consider playing less than 3-4 colors (*gasp!*)

I think that generally the curve of modern is too HIGH. Wasteland would force folks to start considering economy of mana costs. That means faster, aggressive decks can be well placed again...and Mana Leak becomes certifiably AWESOME with Wasteland. Hello control, what took you so long to come to the party?

DragoFireheart

12-31-2012, 04:08 PM

Reprint PoP and Burn breaks loose.

No it won't. Between not having core burn spells like Fireblast and Chain Lightning, burn will not go out of control with PoP.

JDK

12-31-2012, 09:02 PM

PoP eats Jund for breakfast. You don't need all Legacy relevant cards to beat the DtBs in Modern...

DragoFireheart

12-31-2012, 10:45 PM

PoP eats Jund for breakfast. You don't need all Legacy relevant cards to beat the DtBs in Modern...

- I'll agree to disagree.

Phoenix Ignition

01-01-2013, 06:07 PM

No it won't. Between not having core burn spells like Fireblast and Chain Lightning, burn will not go out of control with PoP.

Well, you're wrong. Red Deck Wins (thanks to Feline's data mining) is in the top 8 most successful decks in Modern. You're arguing that burn isn't good? Or are you arguing that PoP isn't going to change much? Either way it is laughable.

And truthfully, Tectonic Edge is near UN-playable. If I'm going for Tron hate (in the form of land) I'm going for Ghost Quarter.

And yet decks still play it as a 4-of? Yes, it's not the best at stopping a nuts Tron draw, but it's no where near "UN-playable."

DragoFireheart

01-01-2013, 06:13 PM

Well, you're wrong. Red Deck Wins (thanks to Feline's data mining) is in the top 8 most successful decks in Modern. You're arguing that burn isn't good? Or are you arguing that PoP isn't going to change much? Either way it is laughable.

There was one RDW (IIRC) at a recent 1050 person tournament. That doesn't exactly scream amazing to me compared to the endless amount of Jund decks and combo decks.

Phoenix Ignition

01-01-2013, 06:18 PM

There was one RDW (IIRC) at a recent 1050 person tournament. That doesn't exactly scream amazing to me compared to the endless amount of Jund decks and combo decks.

What metagame are you playing in? Are you even playing Modern? On MTGO there are probably around 20% of decks that are straight up burn or bump burn. At the 3 PTQs and GPTs in paper magic I've been to, the metagame is probably around 10% burn. It's a cheap deck that actually performs well, and granted a lot of people probably would prefer to play something else, it's so easy to build and pilot that it holds the exact same spot in Legacy as it does in Modern.

DragoFireheart

01-02-2013, 02:24 PM

What metagame are you playing in? Are you even playing Modern? On MTGO

Paper magic still exists last time I checked. Maybe the environment is different online, but...

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/metagame.php?format=Modern&fecha=2012-12
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/metagame.php?format=Modern&fecha=2012-11
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/metagame.php?format=Modern&fecha=2012-10
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/metagame.php?format=Modern&fecha=2012-9

Last four months show that Jund, Affinity, Eldrazi Green, and Birthing Pod are the meta game decks to beat, with Jund overwhelming controlling the overall meta.

So, let me ask you this: What metagames are you playing in? Are you even playing Modern?

JDK

01-02-2013, 03:38 PM

- I'll agree to disagree.

Take a look at Jund's manabase - or Modern's manabases in general. It's like playing Burn against BUG all day. Doesn't take a genius to figure out what Price of Progress would do to the format.

DragoFireheart

01-02-2013, 03:41 PM

Take a look at Jund's manabase - or Modern's manabases in general. Doesn't take a genius to figure out what Price of Progress would do to the format.

Lets try this again.

I'm aware of Junds manabase. I'm also aware of the fact that it's also a dominating deck in the format. Look at the links I posted. Having a anti-greedy manabase deck seems fine to me.

It's not like mono-color decks are flourishing or anything like that.

JDK

01-02-2013, 04:26 PM

Lets try this again.

I'm aware of Junds manabase. I'm also aware of the fact that it's also a dominating deck in the format. Look at the links I posted. Having a anti-greedy manabase deck seems fine to me.

It's not like mono-color decks are flourishing or anything like that.

That's exactly the problem with reprinting Price of Progress...now you are just further proving my point. O.o

PoP doesn't encourage people to cripple their manabases (because those decks wouldn't work well then), it just makes Burn extremely dominant. Just take a look at Legacy and ask BUG-players about their worst matchups and Nemesis-cards.

rxavage

01-02-2013, 05:02 PM

DragoFireheart

01-02-2013, 08:06 PM

That's exactly the problem with reprinting Price of Progress...now you are just further proving my point. O.o

PoP doesn't encourage people to cripple their manabases (because those decks wouldn't work well then), it just makes Burn extremely dominant. Just take a look at Legacy and ask BUG-players about their worst matchups and Nemesis-cards.

And burn would be beaten by sister souls or w/e.

And sister souls would be beaten by jund.

And jund would be beaten by burn.

Jund<Burn<SS<Jund

Other decks would be fine, would run a more stable manabase, and the meta would look more interesting. U/R Storm doesn't care quite as much.

You are forgetting that people can fetch basic lands.

JDK

01-02-2013, 08:22 PM

DragoFireheart

01-02-2013, 08:36 PM

But it's a combo meta anyways besides Jund.

JDK

01-03-2013, 07:13 AM

Affinity, Infect, UW Angel, Burn...

DragoFireheart

01-03-2013, 09:50 AM

Like I said before, I'll agree to disagree. You clearly don't want your mind to be changed, so I won't waste my time doing so any further.

Lord Seth

01-03-2013, 06:10 PM

Fetching for basics makes some of those decks significantly slower and/or lessens their flexibility, which makes them fold to burn anyway.

Your given Rock-Scissor-Paper-Model wouldn't be like that, as Soul Sisters has horrible Combo-MUs (like Splinter Twin), which are pretty much the only other decks with the ability to beat Burn w/ PoP. Combo-Meta sounds like fun, yup.How is Splinter Twin a horrible matchup for Soul Sisters? They play 7-8 Soul Wardens/Collectors, and it requires only one to prevent Deceiver Exarch from providing the win (making it twice as hard for them to combo off), and two of them in play halt Pestermite also (completely preventing them from comboing off). They have pretty significant maindeck hate against Splinter Twin.

JDK

01-03-2013, 08:15 PM

They need two of them to counter Pestermite and you still have to consider Splinter Twin is playing Grim Lavamancer. The new lists even play Snapcaster and Lightning Bolts (full playsets), which renders SoulSister's answers useless (except for PtE, but then again, Splinter Twin plays counters). There is a reason why Martyr.dec's sideboard is full of Twin hate.

Mr. Safety

01-03-2013, 08:26 PM

Take a look at Jund's manabase - or Modern's manabases in general. It's like playing Burn against BUG all day. Doesn't take a genius to figure out what Price of Progress would do to the format.

100% agree.

Amon Amarth

01-04-2013, 03:39 AM

PoP is definitely too good in Modern. Nearly every deck is packed to the gills with nonbasics. However, it would make me want to play Burn though.

DragoFireheart

01-05-2013, 11:09 AM

Nearly every deck is packed to the gills with nonbasics..

...because there's no reason not to.

JDK

01-05-2013, 04:11 PM

...except for maintaining a decent speed and flexibility. :rolleyes:

kombatkiwi

01-06-2013, 03:31 PM

...because there's no reason not to.

I don't think you've made a compelling argument for why there needs to be a reason, though.
As outlined by previous posters, having a manabase made up of nearly all nonbasic lands is the backbone of many decks in modern, from midrange to control, combo to aggro etc.

By putting price of progress in the format burn gains a huge edge over essentially every modern DTB at the moment - your argument as I understand it is that it would be a good thing for the format by knocking off the top dog (Jund) and then allowing more scope for different decks that have mono- or two-color manabases.

The thing that I don't understand is that putting PoP in the format also obliterates many of the decks which already have favoured Jund matchups anyway. If your goal is not solely to weaken Jund then why hate on nonbasics in particular? They aren't necessarily a bad thing if they exist in a balanced metagame (which I believe they do at the moment).

If you make shock-fetch manabases actively bad then Modern becomes a very uninteresting format because having the ability to play lots of colours allows for more flexible deckbuilding and a wider variety of playable strategies. If you think that Jund is too good right now then fine, that's probably a valid opinion, but I don't think it warrants the massive metagame-warp that introducing PoP to the format would cause.

DragoFireheart

01-06-2013, 07:08 PM

I don't think you've made a compelling argument for why there needs to be a reason, though.

You're correct, I haven't. Other than Burn, there is almost no reason to go mono-colored in Modern.

Hell, even Legacy has Goblins. Modern doesn't really have a powerful mono-colored deck. It's a flaw in the format atm.

Phoenix Ignition

01-07-2013, 01:33 AM

Merfolk, elves, and soul sisters are all viable decks. Go ahead and say they aren't but like everyone else has said, you haven't made a compelling argument yet.

DragoFireheart

01-07-2013, 10:16 AM

Merfolk, elves, and soul sisters are all viable decks. Go ahead and say they aren't but like everyone else has said, you haven't made a compelling argument yet.

I think I've made it quite clear that I was not attempting to make a compelling argument for why mono-colored decks are worthwhile in Modern.

Or, are you saying I haven't made a compelling argument for why mono-colored decks aren't viable? Which is it?

alekill

01-28-2013, 12:07 AM

So BBE and seething song were just banned can someone explain this to me? I watch gp streams every once in a while but don't actually know the format so these bans don't make any sense to me.

phonics

01-28-2013, 12:08 AM

Well they dont like combo, and if theres no combo everyone would just play jund.

Phoenix Ignition

01-28-2013, 12:12 AM

Jund was too consistent with too many forms of card advantage that hating it out wasn't a possibility. I don't really know why they banned Seething Song, I don't think it's because less people will be playing Jund. UR storm was a decent deck but I don't think it was too good, and to my knowledge that's the only deck that was playing it.

lordofthepit

01-28-2013, 12:20 AM

So BBE and seething song were just banned can someone explain this to me? I watch gp streams every once in a while but don't actually know the format so these bans don't make any sense to me.

There's an explanation attached to their announcement: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/232

That being said, I don't play the format at all and I don't know much about it, so I can't speak to the validity of those reasons.

Hope that helps! (And I hope it drops the cost of Legacy-crossover staples like Thoughtseize!)

(nameless one)

01-28-2013, 12:23 AM

I can see the next B/R list update for modern:

Karn Liberated is now banned.

morgan_coke

01-28-2013, 12:28 AM

Yeah, I don't really see how Tron doesn't get hit next. I'd almost lean more towards the urza lands themselves, except wotc loves them some timmy decks, so I dunno.

Lt. Quattro

01-28-2013, 01:21 AM

Phoenix Ignition

01-28-2013, 01:58 AM

If storm combo was so good to justify a banning why isn't it being played more than jund? Why not unban Ancestral Vision, Dread Return, Glimpse of Nature, Golgari Grave-Troll, Green Sun's Zenith, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Punishing Fire, Stoneforge Mystic and Wild Nacatl if wizards wants jund and storm to be played less.

As Lordofthepit pointed out, THEY EXPLAIN WHY JUST BELOW THE ANNOUNCEMENT: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/232

But, you know, why don't we just fly off the handle and make shit up instead.

Opaco

01-28-2013, 05:04 AM

I thought that Storm is (was) not such a big deck and that Sheeting Song shouldn't been banned, but Wizards must know what they were doing so whatever. Then I come here, see the explanation link, read it and my heart fell.

Looking at the results of the recent tournaments, Storm is not the most played deck, but it is among the top tier of decks. Four of the players to get at least 18 points at Pro Tour Return to Ravnica were playing Storm, and Olivier Ruel had a Top 8 performance at Grand Prix Lyon playing Storm. On Magic Online, Storm is the second-most-frequent high-finishing deck in Modern events, at 11.42%, behind only Jund. These results indicate that, while far from dominant, Storm is a top tier deck.

It has a grand total of zero placement in the top 16 of the last two modern GPs and just two placements in the previous one. It only has a presence of tenth, and that's on MOL, where it's really cheap, so in paper it will probably be a lot less. And more important, they have admited that the deck is far from dominant, just a top tier deck, but hey, it can win on turn three (which is different to be a turn three combo, ANT could win on turn one, but it's not a turn one combo deck, modern PiF didn't have a consistent turn three win, but turn four), so we are crippling it regardless of results. The underlying statement: if a deck is fast, its results, dominance, interactivity or whatever other factors don't matter, it's gonna get it hit by the banhammer.

JDK

01-28-2013, 06:35 AM

I hate it when Wizards bans a whole archetype with one key card just because they want to support the "HELP PLS, MY WHITE WEENIE DECK CANNOT DEAL WITH STORM!"-guys and their stupid plan to restrict turn 3 kills.

Banning Pyromancer Ascension would have made more sense with the given reasoning, as it enables those fast kills. Sure there are versions without it and even some with Gifts, but they are not as explosive. Fuck this, now I can bury my hopes of playing Dragonstorm one day again.

nedleeds

01-28-2013, 11:21 AM

Wow. Nice format. 4 mana creature is banned. 3 mana dark ritual is banned. Tarmogoyf wasn't banned why? Oh that's right because it's the key selling point of your $7.00 a pack reprint set. Modern is a joke at this point.

Why play, practice and innovate in this format when anything approaching success just meets with banning?

Megadeus

01-28-2013, 11:28 AM

Seething song ban is a fucking joke. BBE a bit less so, bit Wotc doesnt like T3 kills 20% of the time... Im afraid to build my modern deck. Theyy might ban stone rain seeing how much they hate efficient LD...

nedleeds

01-28-2013, 11:42 AM

I mean what if some miserable pile like the Second Sunrise deck wins a GP? Why not unban some cards ... or are they waiting for the format to just become a combination of

tribal_mouth_breather.dec
rampant_cultivate_ramp_derp.dec
burn_wal_mart.dec

I had no problems beating any of the cited decks. You just had to you know ... build a deck instead of pasting a mtgo list into your tcg cart. :rolleyes:

Bionitech

01-28-2013, 12:14 PM

If you haven't noticed, Modern has been a joke for a while now because of its ridiculous B/R list.

JDK

01-28-2013, 12:21 PM

phonics

01-28-2013, 01:18 PM

I can understand the BBE ban, because it offers too much CA für an already great and dominating deck. But destroying an archetype because they don't want "Turn 3 Kills" is a fan service to White Weenie players...

They should be unbanning things to make other decks stronger instead of nerfing the decks that are dominant in the format. No one likes playing with neutered decks.

Koby

01-28-2013, 01:40 PM

They should be unbanning things to make other decks stronger instead of nerfing the decks that are dominant in the format. No one likes playing with neutered decks.

There's an alternative for people who like playing unneutered formats. It's called Legacy :trollface:

socialite

01-28-2013, 03:22 PM

Megadeus

01-28-2013, 03:27 PM

But whats the point of Seething Songs ban? I understand BBE (a little bit anyway), but Song? Its a bad ritual... Im in the side the believes that WOTC pretty much just gave in to the whining about losing to a combo deck. A turn 3 combo gives more than enough time to find an answer. If you are playing Mono Green with no deck manipulation or something else that cant handle combo, then your deck better be fucking awesome vs non combo decks or else the problem isnt the combo deck, its your god awful deck.

socialite

01-28-2013, 03:41 PM

My guess is one of two things. WotC did not like a cheap to build combo deck based around the Storm mechanic trolling the swiss in large numbers or there's an incoming print that just breaks it. Both are probably wrong.

Megadeus

01-28-2013, 03:54 PM

Admiral_Arzar

01-28-2013, 04:06 PM

It is a large percent of the meta but its not like it was dominant. They basically are just showing how much they hate the storm mechanic. They are attempting to destroy it without just blatantly banning it. I doubt they would print something to make storm stupidly broken in the near future considering they don't print good non creature spells anymore anyway.

This. If you read the rest of the ban list, they banned Grapeshot and Empty the Warrens in MTGO pauper - this ban was just more "we hate storm." Forsythe himself once came out and said that he hated the storm mechanic and that it was an "abomination" that should never have seen print. They've been printing hate cards aimed specifically at storm decks often ever since Lorwyn, this is just more of the same attitude.

JDK

01-28-2013, 04:41 PM

Tammit67

01-28-2013, 04:57 PM

Oh really? We will see how well Storm does without SS. ;)

Spoiler alert: It won't :(

Asthereal

01-28-2013, 06:37 PM

I remember some time ago they announced Modern. We would play Mirrodin and newer, allowing us the new fetches, shock duals, and a great number of awesome cards. I was pretty excited, and as a Legacy-only player, I even considered joining in. And then they banned all the cool cards. Even the rediculously underpowered ones. Seriously, if you start to ban stuff like Punishing Fire, you have crippled your format in such a rediculous way that suddenly every card that is any fun to play seems too strong to allow to be legal.

I say unban everything, and just see where the format goes. It might be unbalanced for a year or so, but at least we get to play cards we actually like. Come on, Urza Lands? How can I take a format seriously where Urza Lands are tier 1?

Koby

01-28-2013, 07:02 PM

GSZ + Cloudpost are too powerful for the format left alone. Same with Rite of Flames + Ponder/Preordainfor the Storm deck. Once those are out, and the only remaining option is Zoo, Punishing Fire becomes just boring and ubiquitous. And now we're back to where we started.

Phoenix Ignition

01-28-2013, 07:02 PM

I propose we change the title of this thread to "Non-Modern Players Bitch About a Format They Never Played"

socialite

01-28-2013, 07:04 PM

I propose we change the title of this thread to "Non-Modern Players Bitch About a Format They Never Played"

+1

joemauer

01-28-2013, 07:50 PM

Looking at the results of the recent tournaments, Storm is not the most played deck, but it is among the top tier of decks. Four of the players to get at least 18 points at Pro Tour Return to Ravnica were playing Storm, and Olivier Ruel had a Top 8 performance at Grand Prix Lyon playing Storm. On Magic Online, Storm is the second-most-frequent high-finishing deck in Modern events, at 11.42%, behind only Jund. These results indicate that, while far from dominant, Storm is a top tier deck.

If a deck is top tier then this is a problem that must be fixed?
Does this mean we may see banning of more affinity cards and Martyr of Sands next?

I have said it before but it certainly bears repeating: Modern is in a very akward place. The format was essentially created to replace extended(and to a lesser degree legacy); it is intended to let players continue using their cards after they rotate out of Standard. Problem is that Standard players hate combo and control decks among other things like land destruction. The card pool that Wizards picked is/was strong for combo because of the card pool itself and the lack of good cards for control. Wizards was/is trying to nerf anything combo to appease the Standard players that they are trying to lure into their new format.

A strong aggro control deck was primed to dominate the format due to how well combo is positioned which meant more bans for WotC's pet format.

It seems that Wizards won't be happy with Modern until everyone is herp derping around with dumb aggro decks and ramp decks like in Standard.

socialite

01-28-2013, 08:00 PM

Crying about the lack of combo decks in Modern is laughable.

There's like...
http://static.starcitygames.com/www/images/article/SoManyCombos.jpg

joemauer

01-28-2013, 08:21 PM

Crying about the lack of combo decks in Modern is laughable.

There's like...
http://static.starcitygames.com/www/images/article/SoManyCombos.jpg

The crux of the problem is the opposite. Crying about too much Combos has caused stupid bans.

Oh and you can never have too much Combos, the snack. Those things are great.

Amon Amarth

01-28-2013, 08:29 PM

Is Jund even that much weaker now that it (presumably) has to run Huntmaster of the Fells?

JDK

01-28-2013, 09:27 PM

Crying about the lack of combo decks in Modern is laughable.
If we just take the competitive decks into account, there are Pod, Twin and Scapeshift. Arguably Infect is a combo deck too, but it's not as consistent as the others and Tron is more like a control-ish Ramp.dec. Living End, Eggs, Reanimator and Nivmagus aren't really decks you see on a regular basis.

So yeah, you can count the viable combo decks with one hand.

Phoenix Ignition

01-28-2013, 09:44 PM

Is Jund even that much weaker now that it (presumably) has to run Huntmaster of the Fells?

Yes, much. Now blue has a chance against Jund because countering their 4 mana spell actually works. Also, obviously 2 2/2 creatures is much easier to deal with than 3/2 Haste + Liliana (which isn't a guarantee or anything but, still happened) on turn 3/4.

socialite

01-28-2013, 09:56 PM

If we just take the competitive decks into account, there are Pod, Twin and Scapeshift. Arguably Infect is a combo deck too, but it's not as consistent as the others and Tron is more like a control-ish Ramp.dec. Living End, Eggs, Reanimator and Nivmagus aren't really decks you see on a regular basis.

So yeah, you can count the viable combo decks with one hand.

So WotC hates combo... bitch bitch bitch. Except there's four top tier combo decks in the format, assuming you count UR which is apparently now defunct because it lost one ritual. Lol?

Fizzeler

01-28-2013, 10:16 PM

It is more the banning essentially killed Hive Mind and was unwarranted, WotC stated the deck wasn't dominating and tbh the turn 3 kill was not that often maybe 25% of the time, but the same thing happens with Eggs and Infect

kwis

01-28-2013, 10:46 PM

socialite

01-28-2013, 10:52 PM

What WOTC are doing is really a massive joke. They are trying to create an eternal format by banning all the fun, enjoyable, and powerful cards that makes eternal formats work.

Setting a turn 3 kill limit is quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever heard, I thought it was a joke when I heard about it before this article.

Kewl opinion bro.

kwis

01-28-2013, 10:59 PM

Kewl opinion bro.

Thanks Brah

Lord Seth

01-28-2013, 11:04 PM

SpikeyMikey

01-28-2013, 11:57 PM

Yes, much. Now blue has a chance against Jund because countering their 4 mana spell actually works. Also, obviously 2 2/2 creatures is much easier to deal with than 3/2 Haste + Liliana (which isn't a guarantee or anything but, still happened) on turn 3/4.

Blue still doesn't beat anything else in the format though. My thought is that Olivia makes a better 4 drop than Huntmaster, for the most part. Also, Jund was never a good deck to begin with. It was 45% vs. the field. Zoo was better before they banned Nacatl (52% at Worlds, although Tribal Flames Zoo skewed that down with a 42% win percentage; straight Zoo was around 56%). I think people will move away from Jund. A fair portion of them will move to Pod. Pod has already been seeing an uptick in play, with more PTQ T8's than any other deck by a fairly decent margin. The loss of Storm just makes Pod that much better, as it beats all of the fair decks by stalling out with Finks and Restoration Angel until it can combo off. The massive amount of creature search the deck runs combined with a plethora of good utility creatures means it's difficult to hate out. What it does poorly against are stack-based decks as it doesn't really interact well with cards that don't turn sideways. But there are precious few of those decks anymore. I predict Pod is going to be a problem for the PTQ circuit for the next month or two until people bring enough hate to force it out, similar to what happened to Twin in the wake of Philly leading up to Worlds in 2011. G/W Hexproof also gets a boost, as its success was directly related to Jund dropping Liliana. With Jund taking a massive hit to field saturation (and it will take a big hit), Boggles are going to be everywhere. Spellskite is still a good answer, but not as good as it is vs. Infect. Past the next 2 months, I'm not sure where the format is going to go. If I had to guess, I'd say Bant will be the next big thing, but it's too hard to say at this point. Magic players can be a bit unpredictable. But Bant has the potential for massive amounts of damage and it has the durdley midrange appeal that Jund has, it just has less card advantage and more explosive potential.

TraxDaMax

01-29-2013, 01:42 AM

The bitching makes little sense to me. Neither ban crushes the associated archetypes. Jund is fucking everywhere and while its not nearly unbeatable its omnipresence makes for a stale format. I found the explanation very reasonable.

So why isn't Lingering Souls banned?

It has DERP written all over it because it's just f'ing boring. When Jund starts splashing white for these type of cards, they should also be weary of whats going on. I actually watched some Modern at a European GP. No offense but usually it was who draws Lingering Souls.
I mean in half a dozen of the cases the answer to the question: "Am I dead now?" , was "Yes, unless I draw Lingering Souls"

Feels like they want to turn the format into Turbofog.

Anyways, no problem I'll bring Eggs to next tourny I play, and combo for 20mins on turn 3. I'm sure new players will enjoy that.

JDK

01-29-2013, 03:05 AM

So WotC hates combo... bitch bitch bitch. Except there's four top tier combo decks in the format, assuming you count UR which is apparently now defunct because it lost one ritual. Lol?
You are free to continue playing UR Storm without Seething Song. All you do is bitch at the 'bitching', so please do us a favor and add more weight to your posts by actually adding content. Thanks.

Three viable combo decks is a joke.

Artowis

01-29-2013, 03:23 AM

You are free to continue playing UR Storm without Seething Song. All you do is bitch at the 'bitching', so please do us a favor and add more weight to your posts by actually adding content. Thanks.

Three viable combo decks is a joke.

You should be happy they didn't bother banning Infect cards quite yet.

Why is anyone surprised by this again? They've stated their guidelines from the format and have shown on multiple occasions that they have no reservations about shaking up the format and slamming anything they feel either wins before T4 with too much consistency or narrows the viable decks of the format too much. As for the 'let all the banned cards back!' people, FFS do you not remember that the first Modern PT was defined by everyone killing each other on T2/3?

This is the first format that Wizards / DCI have actively taken a part in shaping how it goes by actual criteria instead of just by feel and tournament attendance. If you can't stand Modern having an active ban-list, then I suggest finding a new format until the format stabilizes into something everyone is happy with. As Chapin and CeddyP put it, these bans show the way they want to go in the future and no-one should be surprised if Modern season a year from now has another 5-7 cards banned.

Asthereal

01-29-2013, 04:35 AM

Opaco

01-29-2013, 06:27 AM

In general I'm ok with the massive initial and follow-up bannings, and I also think that is important to have a diverse meta and if a deck is too powefull or dominant something has to be done. Modern is not Vintage or Legacy.

But that into the consideration, the reason I and many people despise the Sheething Song ban is that the deck wasn'y overly played, didn't dominate anything, didn't consistently win in turn three and facing minimal disruption, that even didn't need to be dedicated hate, it didn't combo out at all. It didn't shape the format and it didn't narrow the viable decks. If that's the case, I would say that ramp or tron decks do more to the viability of decks overshadowing any control approach that tries to get to late game. The only thing it did was being slightly overplayed in MOL, and that wasn't about power, but because if you made concessions to the manabase, which the deck could support without losing much power, it was dirt cheap.

One thing to take into consideration with this ban everything that stands out is that every time there is a ban Modern is losing more players which get fed-up with searching, buying and mastering the top tier decks just to see all their effort wasted. In this couple of days two of the things that I'm seeing at my local store are people selling their modern collections because of their main deck was jund and people trying to borrow cards like Karn Liberated, because even if they want to play the next top decks, no one wants to invest in another tier deck in case it is the next one to get the bans.

socialite

01-29-2013, 09:13 AM

So why isn't Lingering Souls banned?

It has DERP written all over it because it's just f'ing boring. When Jund starts splashing white for these type of cards, they should also be weary of whats going on. I actually watched some Modern at a European GP. No offense but usually it was who draws Lingering Souls.
I mean in half a dozen of the cases the answer to the question: "Am I dead now?" , was "Yes, unless I draw Lingering Souls"

Feels like they want to turn the format into Turbofog.

Anyways, no problem I'll bring Eggs to next tourny I play, and combo for 20mins on turn 3. I'm sure new players will enjoy that.

:cry:

You are free to continue playing UR Storm without Seething Song. All you do is bitch at the 'bitching', so please do us a favor and add more weight to your posts by actually adding content. Thanks.

Three viable combo decks is a joke.

Three fundamentally different combo decks in one format seems perfectly reasonable to me. I've never felt UR Storm to be a particularity strong meta choice both pre and post bans, which is why I've never sleeved it up outside of running the gauntlet. Content is an interesting issue considering the past three pages have been completely devoid of it. The field is littered with outrageous absolute statements from individuals who seem to be relatively out of touch with how this format functions. Artowis pretty much hit the nail on the head.

JDK

01-29-2013, 12:37 PM

You should be happy they didn't bother banning Infect cards quite yet.
Why should they ban infect cards, when the deck doesn't guarantee T3 kills (it's pretty inconsistent) and can be easily hated? And why should that make me feel happy?

Three fundamentally different combo decks in one format seems perfectly reasonable to me. I've never felt UR Storm to be a particularity strong meta choice both pre and post bans, which is why I've never sleeved it up outside of running the gauntlet. Content is an interesting issue considering the past three pages have been completely devoid of it. The field is littered with outrageous absolute statements from individuals who seem to be relatively out of touch with how this format functions. Artowis pretty much hit the nail on the head.
Look out for the irony.

nedleeds

01-29-2013, 01:09 PM

Well at least now the tempo oriented meta can adjust to the durdling by leveraging synergistic flex-slots and becoming more midrange than aggro.

socialite

01-29-2013, 01:39 PM

Look out for the irony.

Says the Storm fan boy.

SpikeyMikey

01-29-2013, 01:59 PM

Says the Storm fan boy.

I was seriously considering Storm for this PTQ season (up until yesterday, of course). It was well-positioned and had a great degree of resiliency for a Modern combo deck. Storm definitely would've been a strong choice in the current meta.

JDK

01-29-2013, 02:11 PM

Well at least now the tempo oriented meta can adjust to the durdling by leveraging synergistic flex-slots and becoming more midrange than aggro.
UWr and UW Midrange have been successful for a while now already.

@Ertai's Familiar
You are not making a point, except for showing your lack of awareness of the format. That's the irony.

socialite

01-29-2013, 03:07 PM

I was seriously considering Storm for this PTQ season (up until yesterday, of course). It was well-positioned and had a great degree of resiliency for a Modern combo deck. Storm definitely would've been a strong choice in the current meta.

To each their own.

@Hellspawn
It is not difficult to see what is doing well in Modern. It is of my opinion that the deck is overrated. Interestingly enough some of the counterpoints to the banning (even in this thread) seem to reflect my feelings.

SpikeyMikey

01-29-2013, 03:40 PM

To each their own.

@Hellspawn
It is not difficult to see what is doing well in Modern. It is of my opinion that the deck is overrated. Interestingly enough some of the counterpoints to the banning (even in this thread) seem to reflect my feelings.

To be fair, I was testing the deck with Guttersnipe, which increases the consistency and allows you to bypass a lot of traditional storm hate. So my experience may be somewhat different than yours. My curve was a little higher than the average storm deck, but I had increased consistency and resiliency to compensate for the loss of half a turn.

Menteith

01-30-2013, 12:48 PM

This is the first format that Wizards / DCI have actively taken a part in shaping how it goes by actual criteria instead of just by feel and tournament attendance. If you can't stand Modern having an active ban-list, then I suggest finding a new format until the format stabilizes into something everyone is happy with. As Chapin and CeddyP put it, these bans show the way they want to go in the future and no-one should be surprised if Modern season a year from now has another 5-7 cards banned.

The issue is that players who leave the format may not come back. Speaking from my own experience, I was incredibly excited for Modern, and really enjoyed the format, but the forced metagame-shifting/active banned list managed to turn me off enough that I left. And right now, I don't see any real reason to get back in - the issues I had with it are still there, and the decisions being made by WotC aren't resolving them, they're exacerbating them. The same is true of most of the people I'm familiar with - of the group I typically game with, I believe that there's maybe one or two out of fifteen people who still have even a passing interest in the format, and all for pretty much the same reason.

Wizard absolutely has the right to do what they want with their product, and their decisions may indeed bring the format more in-line with what they want - but there is a real cost in alienated players who dislike what's going on. And a "take it or leave it" approach might end with too many deciding to leave it, and drive Modern down the road Extended went (more or less irrelevant outside of the Extended Season).

Davran

01-30-2013, 01:06 PM

The issue is that players who leave the format may not come back. Speaking from my own experience, I was incredibly excited for Modern, and really enjoyed the format, but the forced metagame-shifting/active banned list managed to turn me off enough that I left. And right now, I don't see any real reason to get back in - the issues I had with it are still there, and the decisions being made by WotC aren't resolving them, they're exacerbating them. The same is true of most of the people I'm familiar with - of the group I typically game with, I believe that there's maybe one or two out of fifteen people who still have even a passing interest in the format, and all for pretty much the same reason.

Wizard absolutely has the right to do what they want with their product, and their decisions may indeed bring the format more in-line with what they want - but there is a real cost in alienated players who dislike what's going on. And a "take it or leave it" approach might end with too many deciding to leave it, and drive Modern down the road Extended went (more or less irrelevant outside of the Extended Season).

I'm in the same place as you. This is now the second time I've started to build a deck that seemed fun and interesting to have one of the key components banned. To be perfectly honest, I have little interest in actually investing in a "tier" deck out of fear that a key card will be banned in the next update.

WotC and the DCI certainly have the right to do what they want with their brand and the formats...but I'm more than a little disappointed that their decisions are slowly but surely weeding out combo and control as viable archetypes. I personally have little interest in a format where the guy who can protect his midrange beater better is the winner. I'm curious to see just how alone I am in that sentiment. I'd hate to see modern go the way of extended because I think it would discourage WotC from such "experiments" in the future.

Admiral_Arzar

01-30-2013, 04:49 PM

I'm in the same place as you. This is now the second time I've started to build a deck that seemed fun and interesting to have one of the key components banned. To be perfectly honest, I have little interest in actually investing in a "tier" deck out of fear that a key card will be banned in the next update.

WotC and the DCI certainly have the right to do what they want with their brand and the formats...but I'm more than a little disappointed that their decisions are slowly but surely weeding out combo and control as viable archetypes. I personally have little interest in a format where the guy who can protect his midrange beater better is the winner. I'm curious to see just how alone I am in that sentiment. I'd hate to see modern go the way of extended because I think it would discourage WotC from such "experiments" in the future.

I discovered the only cost-effective way to have fun with modern a few months ago when I got back into the format. I don't bother building tier decks, even if I have all the cards. I just try and build modern versions of old standard decks that I liked (currently Lorwyn/Alara 5cc) that are generally not amazing but are loads of fun to play. The advantage of playing mediocre homebrews is you aren't going to get banhammered (and hey, I even win a lot of games - my homebrew 5cc is excellent against aggro and midrange decks).

DragoFireheart

02-16-2013, 12:32 PM

I don't bother building tier decks, even if I have all the cards. \

Solution to Modern problem: don't waste time building good decks out of fear of a key card getting banned.

joemauer

02-16-2013, 03:46 PM

\

Solution to Modern problem: don't waste time building decks out of fear of a key card getting banned.

Fixed that for you.

Intet's Attendant

02-18-2013, 05:11 PM

\

Solution to Modern problem: don't waste time building good decks out of fear of a key card getting banned.

I just try and build as budget of decks as possible so I won't be disappointed when my deck gets neutered.

>2013
>Spending excessive money on Magic cards
>not a good plan

kwis

04-22-2013, 12:58 AM

Medic

04-22-2013, 01:44 AM

Second Sunrise is banned

It seems like every set they just decide to nix another interesting combo deck and make the format far less attractive to new players. I considered building a Modern deck and now I am very glad that I haven't since the last set neutered R/u storm which I was considering and this update neutered Eggs which I had almost all of the cards to throw together.

What can people who actually enjoy/are involved with the format say to encourage someone who likes to play combos to join the format? I love the idea of the Griselbrand deck and I don't really mind Twin but I expect that as soon as I buy into the format my deck of choice might be neutered in a matter of a month.

Honestly, by now it seems that WOTC is intent on removing combo from this format, one deck at a time. I've invested in both storm and eggs, each time about a month before their removal, and I'm finding the only way to really play modern is to brew a deck (or is based on creatures, anything based on creatures is fine) and pray. I wouldn't be surprised if M14 removes Splinter Twin from the format while adding a functional reprint of BBE. If you want to play combo in this format, you're probably safest playing what they most recently unbanned: Scapeshift/Valakut. Although I'd be careful, they might re-ban it.

kombatkiwi

04-22-2013, 02:51 AM

Not happy.
IDK what deck to make now they all look boring as fuck compared to eggs. (Not to mention a lot more expensive)

Wanderlust

04-22-2013, 04:42 AM

Eggs was the coolest deck in the format. Sad times.

LeaPlath

04-22-2013, 07:37 AM

This wasn't so much about neutering combo, as time reasons. A lot of players who had just picked up the deck and were taking forever to combo out with it. And players weren't scooping there cause in eggs, it was easy to wiff or if they missed triggers, you could call judge and after, I do believe, 3 missed triggers, it was game loss. Similar reason top is banned.

Storm was the whole turn 3 win thing as well and storm decks have evolved in modern into a more pyromancers ascension focused build. Eggs existed before Faith's Reward and it can still tinker a Black Lotus out for UU, so the deck will adapt and change.

I will say though, I am sad eggs is weakened like this. I play Scapeshift, and I love the thinky combo decks, like Eggs. But you can't just say "No combo decks". Look at the ban list. They've banned anything that has stifled the format or been too strong, like BBE, Wild Nyancat and the like.

Opaco

04-22-2013, 08:48 AM

IMHO this ban is about neutering non interactive combo, whatever the official explanation is, which lately tend to be just slanted convenient facts (SDT time problems, being legacy legal, vs something level blue un-funess at the time) or outright bullshit (the 'gentleman agreement'). Nacatl zoo, Punishing zoo and BBE jund in their respective moments were too strong, monopolizing tops and, being just goodstuff decks, extremely difficult to hate out, but PiF wasn't pushing the numbers neither in turn three wins nor dominance (another bullshit explanation, its prevalence in MOL was due to being dirt cheap and despite it still didn't cope the tops) and Second Sunrise wasn't nor as dominant nor as time consuming as they claim, but boring as hell to watch and a wasted coverage when it reached a top.

Now the remaining combo decks are either creature removal interactive, like Pod variants or Twin, have a slow set-up like Valakut or post ban PiF, or far too inconsistent/junkie, like Griselbanned or adNauseam. When the fastest combo style deck is probably straight burn, the format is not as diverse as it should be.

nedleeds

04-22-2013, 11:35 AM

Mr. Froggy

04-22-2013, 11:47 AM

It's a matter of opinion. Some people hate Eggs (or combo decks in general), but others not. Modern is not a place for combo decks which is why I have yet to even get into Modern. I wanted to play Enduring Ideal, but they banned Seething Song... I don't see myself playing this format... Ever. Unless they decide to fix this piece of junk.

nedleeds

04-22-2013, 11:57 AM

I mean ... why drive out? Why play face to face magic ($$$ tourney aside where $ is the obvious motivation) and play eggs. I draw my hate and crush you or we sit for 30 minutes. Go home and fucking play Dr. Mario.

(nameless one)

04-22-2013, 12:03 PM

I'm actually quite happy with the banning.

Now I'm gonna build Glasscannon Griselbrand and not worry for another 3 months!

JDK

04-22-2013, 12:04 PM

If you thought this deck was fun and interesting you are either lying or autistic. The problem, in addition, to the time constraints was the rules minutia one had to resort to if you were trying to win against this deck and hadn't drawn your hate cards. Modern doesn't need a deck that require decks to pack 6-8 hate cards, that ... if you draw them you crush and if you mull to oblivion to find them you have to sit there for 45 minutes whilst your opponent masturbates.

First of all the deck can be easily hated with generally playable cards which are also good in other matchups and sometimes maindeck material: Aven Mindcensor, Pithing Needle, Surgical Extraction, Discard, Blind Obedience, Stony Silence, Rest in Peace, Leonin Arbiter, Tormod's Crypt, Nihil Spellbomb, Counters ...

Secondly, the problem with time issues was a result of unexperienced/slow players picking up the deck (and also playing against it - know when to concede).

I hate to see the deck gone, as I've picked it up myself, but I understand the reasoning. I just don't get the hate.

@Froggy
There's still Pod, Twin, Scapeshift, Tron and Infect (+ minor ones like Living End).

Mr. Froggy

04-22-2013, 12:17 PM

Arsenal

04-22-2013, 12:25 PM

Secondly, the problem with time issues was a result of unexperienced/slow players picking up the deck (and also playing against it - know when to concede).

As a non-Eggs player, I will not concede to Eggs. The Eggs player can very easily make mistakes during his 10-30 minute turn. Those mistakes may or may not be game losing for him. Other than being able to eat food earlier, there's zero advantage for the non-Eggs player to concede, especially if the non-Eggs player won game 1.

Fade

04-22-2013, 12:39 PM

I have been playing Eggs for about 4 months and won a PTQ with the deck. In all my matches, I only went to time once and it was only 3 minutes over. Most of my matches ended with ~15 minutes left on the clock. The "slow" pilots generally don't realize after they draw so many second sunrises you can mathematically prove that you are going to inevitably draw your entire deck and there is no possible way of fizzling or fail to explain that to their opponent. If the opponent makes you go through it or is clueless about what you are doing then just go through the motions (it takes ~5 minutes compared to everyone saying 15-30 minutes) and ask their opponent if they would like to concede once you show them the win con (what your opponent wants to see) and how the loop is performed. This causes game 1 to go a bit longer, but it makes the next games go much faster.

Their reasoning behind banning Second Sunrise was pretty stupid in my opinion. I can't play my favorite deck in Modern now due to the incompetent pilots who picked it up. If these pilots would have practiced the deck instead of going into the tournament cold, then this reasoning would have been completely invalid. I would have much rather Wizards say that the combo was too strong and it needed to be banned instead of punishing others due to incompetence.

nedleeds

04-22-2013, 12:42 PM

First of all the deck can be easily hated with generally playable cards which are also good in other matchups and sometimes maindeck material: Aven Mindcensor, Pithing Needle, Surgical Extraction, Discard, Blind Obedience, Stony Silence, Rest in Peace, Leonin Arbiter, Tormod's Crypt, Nihil Spellbomb, Counters ...

Secondly, the problem with time issues was a result of unexperienced/slow players picking up the deck (and also playing against it - know when to concede).

I hate to see the deck gone, as I've picked it up myself, but I understand the reasoning. I just don't get the hate.

@Froggy
There's still Pod, Twin, Scapeshift, Tron and Infect (+ minor ones like Living End).

Sure, that's what I was saying. But with limited cards sifting and tutors in Modern you either have your hate or you don't when you fanned your opener. I also ran many of the cards you mentioned ... BO, Stony Silence, AMC ... thoughseize, RIP etc.. When I went Thoughtseize, untap, hate card I won. When I didn't I lost.

It was pretty binary. When the egg player got going I just wanted to flip the table. Everyone I know shared this opinion. I understand playing the deck at an event with significant stakes as it performs well but I don't understand why having it around benefits anyone. Or benefits the format. I'm sure if everything was unbanned this deck wouldn't work as well, but unfortunately a conditional 3/3 for G is banned in this format.

JDK

04-22-2013, 01:07 PM

As a non-Eggs player, I will not concede to Eggs. The Eggs player can very easily make mistakes during his 10-30 minute turn. Those mistakes may or may not be game losing for him. Other than being able to eat food earlier, there's zero advantage for the non-Eggs player to concede, especially if the non-Eggs player won game 1.
Look at what Fade wrote.

An Eggs player doesn't need much time, he just needs some turns. Most other decks need more to win, so by not conceding when Eggs is comboing off and has enough draw/sunrise effects you are just hurting yourself. A good player won't mess up.

Arsenal

04-22-2013, 01:28 PM

Look at what Fade wrote.

An Eggs player doesn't need much time, he just needs some turns. Most other decks need more to win, so by not conceding when Eggs is comboing off and has enough draw/sunrise effects you are just hurting yourself. A good player won't mess up.

As someone who has played against Eggs in Modern (and now in Legacy), I disagree completely. It certainly doesn't take 5 minutes for Eggs to go through the combo completely, even for skilled Eggs pilots. And if I win game 1, what incentive do I have to scoop to Eggs game 2? Pilots, no matter how good, of every deck make misplays and mistakes all the time; Eggs is certainly no exception. If I'm at a Competitive REL, I win Game 1 handedly, and he's comboing off Game 2, why do I scoop? What advantage am I giving myself by scooping when I'm up a game?

JDK

04-22-2013, 01:34 PM

Arsenal

04-22-2013, 01:36 PM

You lower your chances to win in time in Game 3. I don't say "scoop when he goes off", but you have to know when the chances of him fizzling are so marginal you'd do better using the saved time. That's all.

lol @ Eggs in Legacy.

Right, once he hits a certain point in the combo stream, I'll scoop, but that point isn't hit until much later than 5 minutes into the combo, which is why I disagree with Fade that it takes about 5 minutes + demonstration of loops in order to elicit a concession. Also, yes, lol at Eggs in Legacy.

Fade

04-22-2013, 01:46 PM

As someone who has played against Eggs in Modern (and now in Legacy), I disagree completely. It certainly doesn't take 5 minutes for Eggs to go through the combo completely, even for skilled Eggs pilots. And if I win game 1, what incentive do I have to scoop to Eggs game 2? Pilots, no matter how good, of every deck make misplays and mistakes all the time; Eggs is certainly no exception. If I'm at a Competitive REL, I win Game 1 handedly, and he's comboing off Game 2, why do I scoop? What advantage am I giving myself by scooping when I'm up a game?

I assure you that it does not take longer than 8 minutes on an average for me to draw my entire deck and explain the loop as long as the opponent is tapped out or silenced. There are plenty of shortcuts that can be done like sac'ing all the egg at once to put them on the stack and drawing the cards all at once. You can also perform all your shuffling in one go if you have a sunrise in hand so you can fetch/ghost quarter/reshape at the same time.

After looping the eggs and showing my opponent how many draw effects I have, I can then multiply that number by the amount of sunrises I have in hand and tell them how many draws I have to draw into another sunrise. You can also reveal all the sunrises you draw to your opponent as you draw them and eventually your opponent gets the picture. I realize it's not fun for the opponent to sit there, but it's literally their choice. However, it does take longer if after casting each an every spell you have to wait for your opponent to moan or groan in order for it to resolve.

Phoenix Ignition

04-22-2013, 01:51 PM

I'm a fan of the new banning, not because I hated playing against the deck (online I just gotta F6 and put on some Netflix), but because watching it at any event was just so fucking boring. It was by far my least favorite deck to watch. My new least favorite deck to watch is Sneak & Show, so maybe that'll get the ax eventually and I can finally watch some magic streams/SCG events without falling asleep.

Fade

04-22-2013, 01:54 PM

UnsungHero

04-22-2013, 01:54 PM

One time my opponent was playing Autism Simulator (I refuse to call it eggs)
He took a 20 min turn, and grapeshot me for 20, and forgets I have Leyline of Sanctity.
oops.

So happy to see the Sun has set with Second Sunrise.

Arsenal

04-22-2013, 01:56 PM

I assure you that it does not take longer than 8 minutes on an average for me to draw my entire deck and explain the loop as long as the opponent is tapped out or silenced. There are plenty of shortcuts that can be done like sac'ing all the egg at once to put them on the stack and drawing the cards all at once. You can also perform all your shuffling in one go if you have a sunrise in hand so you can fetch/ghost quarter/reshape at the same time.

After looping the eggs and showing my opponent how many draw effects I have, I can then multiply that number by the amount of sunrises I have in hand and tell them how many draws I have to draw into another sunrise. You can also reveal all the sunrises you draw to your opponent as you draw them and eventually your opponent gets the picture. I realize it's not fun for the opponent to sit there, but it's literally their choice. However, it does take longer if after casting each an every spell you have to wait for your opponent to moan or groan in order for it to resolve.

Why would I allow you to shortcut? I have every right to have you announce and play though all of your triggers and sequencing. There's very little advantage to me to allow you to shortcut, while there's a decided advantage to you in shortcutting (less opportunity to misplay/mistake). Mistakes happen all the time, even from experience combo players. If I'm up a game, and you make none, fine, onto Game 3. If you make one or more, I can potentially win the match right there. Again, why do I want to scoop to you?

Fade

04-22-2013, 01:59 PM

Why would I allow you to shortcut? I have every right to have you announce and play though all of your triggers and sequencing. There's very little advantage to me to allow you to shortcut, while there's a decided advantage to you in shortcutting (less opportunity to misplay/mistake). Mistakes happen all the time, even from experience combo players. If you make none, fine, onto Game 3. If you make one or more, I can potentially win the match right there. Again, why do I want to scoop to you?

I'm using the term shortcut loosely. I am allowed to sac all my eggs in response to each other and resolve the draws. I can also reshape, then holding priority sac ghost quarters and crack fetches. I don't care if you think you are allowing me to shortcut. I stated before, I don't expect my opponent to concede. They know I have a consistent combo deck which is probably favored in turns.

Arsenal

04-22-2013, 02:01 PM

I'm using the term shortcut loosely. I am allowed to sac all my eggs in response to each other and resolve the draws. I can also reshape, then holding priority sac ghost quarters and crack fetches. I don't care if you think you are allowing me to shortcut. I stated before, I don't expect my opponent to concede. They know I have a consistent combo deck which is probably favored in turns.

Sure bro, good luck with your awesome Eggs deck in Modern.

Fade

04-22-2013, 02:16 PM

Sure bro, good luck with your awesome Eggs deck in Modern.

I might have to start playing it in legacy now

JDK

04-22-2013, 02:43 PM

Sure bro, good luck with your awesome Eggs deck in Modern.

Now you are just being childish...

Arsenal

04-22-2013, 02:50 PM

Now you are just being childish...

I can't take a guy seriously saying he can draw his deck and win in 5-8 minutes with Eggs. I've watched tons of Pro Tour vids where the Eggs player combos off and it's much closer to 15-20 minutes into the combo stream and he still hasn't drawn his entire deck, but that's far enough into the stream when the opponent concedes.

Fade

04-22-2013, 03:04 PM

I can't take a guy seriously saying he can draw his deck and win in 5-8 minutes with Eggs. I've watched tons of Pro Tour vids where the Eggs player combos off and it's much closer to 15-20 minutes into the combo stream and he still hasn't drawn his entire deck, but that's far enough into the stream when the opponent concedes.

There are a number of factors that go into how long it can take on the turn you combo, that's not the point I'm making. Playing in a competitive environment, of course it's going to take a bit longer to combo off as you want to make sure you do everything right. The more important factor is that the deck should not be going to time all that frequently. There are a number of players who can kill with the deck going to game 3 and not go to time. The reason for the card being banned because of idiots picking up the deck and not knowing what to do should not be a reason to ban the card. If that's the case then why in the hell isn't high tide banned in legacy?

Arsenal

04-22-2013, 03:20 PM

There are a number of factors that go into how long it can take on the turn you combo, that's not the point I'm making.

Oh really? So when I (and most) other said that it takes double digit minutes to combo off completely (as in, proper sequencing and no concession), and you replied with this:

If the opponent makes you go through it or is clueless about what you are doing then just go through the motions (it takes ~5 minutes compared to everyone saying 15-30 minutes) and ask their opponent if they would like to concede once you show them the win con (what your opponent wants to see) and how the loop is performed.

I assure you that it does not take longer than 8 minutes on an average for me to draw my entire deck and explain the loop as long as the opponent is tapped out or silenced.

You weren't making a point that it takes you 5-8 minutes to draw your entire deck and win? Seems like you're backtracking pretty hard now.

Playing in a competitive environment, of course it's going to take a bit longer to combo off as you want to make sure you do everything right.

And what environment other than a competitive one do you think we're talking about and what Wizards is concerned with? If we're talking about Eggs in a competitive setting (which I thought was a given and didn't needed to be pointed out), then how are you going to claim you can combo off completely in 5-8 minutes, but it'll take longer in a competitive setting? What non-competitive setting are you comboing off in 5-8 minutes? Cifka, one of the world's best Eggs players, couldn't even combo out in 5-8 minutes, with a much more realistic target of 15-20 minutes (which is about what people were talking about).

nedleeds

04-22-2013, 03:47 PM

"skilled Eggs pilots" (lol) and egg zealots are just pissing into the wind at this point ... it's wotc's eternal format for standard 'graduates'

- the deck wasn't skill intensive, it required some basic ordering but never had to enter combat or interact with targeted discard or explore multiple avenues to victory (e.g. Legacy TES), it simply went off or didn't - playing some silence effects or basic bounce to salvage game two (if there was a game 2)

- the deck has humiliating on camera examples some with players leaving the table of pro level events whilst their opponent dicked about with simple sequencing

- its presence adds nothing to the modern format in the way of attracting players, imagine graduating standard guy sits down and plays against eggs, i'm sure he'd be back for more interactive fun the next week

- just a boring, binary deck, i draw hate cards and play first and win, i don't draw hate cards and lose - what a great match

Again if the banned list weren't 50 cards long it's likely this deck wouldn't even exist (Dredge might be a faster GY based combo deck? Mental Misstep might be a universal solvent for fair decks to interact whilst tapped out? Wild Nacatyl might be fast enough to kill before the fundamental turn for eggs) ... but that's where we are

Fade

04-22-2013, 04:15 PM

Oh really? So when I (and most) other said that it takes double digit minutes to combo off completely (as in, proper sequencing and no concession), and you replied with this:

You weren't making a point that it takes you 5-8 minutes to draw your entire deck and win? Seems like you're backtracking pretty hard now.

And what environment other than a competitive one do you think we're talking about and what Wizards is concerned with? If we're talking about Eggs in a competitive setting (which I thought was a given and didn't needed to be pointed out), then how are you going to claim you can combo off completely in 5-8 minutes, but it'll take longer in a competitive setting? What non-competitive setting are you comboing off in 5-8 minutes? Cifka, one of the world's best Eggs players, couldn't even combo out in 5-8 minutes, with a much more realistic target of 15-20 minutes (which is about what people were talking about).

It doesn't take me more than 8 minutes to show my opponent I have a win whether you believe me or not (explaining to opponent I can draw my deck and demonstrating the kill con when I know they cannot interact). I have had matches end with 30 minutes on the clock. That's including sideboard and shuffling. You get to they point where you are drawing 10+ cards per sunrise effect and you don't have to worry about maximizing percentages because you have drawn an extra sunrise.

The videos you have watched with Cifka playing he is under stress from being on camera and from playing at a Pro level event. People get nervous in these types of situations. You also notice he is playing very deliberately in order to not make a mistake and in most situations he doesn't have a sunrise effect in hand. He is thinking about ways to maximizes his percentage to draw the sunrise. He speeds up dramatically as long as he has an extra one and other than that he is playing to make sure he doesn't get warnings and such. In a PTQ environment or grand prix environment, you don't have this much stress on you to ensure you playing the deck perfectly.

Also saying is takes 15-20 minutes to combo is just absurd. If that's the case, then all of my matches should have gone to time in the months I have played the deck for the PTQ season. Taking into account just sideboard and shuffling you are down to 44 minutes left on the clock assuming you started right at 50 minutes, but we all know players can sideboard slowly or shuffle for too long. Saying that is takes 30 to 40 minutes to combo means that there is only 4-14 minutes left on the clock for the turns preceding the combo turn and for your opponent to play before the combo turn.

Arsenal

04-22-2013, 04:30 PM

It doesn't take me more than 8 minutes to show my opponent I have a win

That is not what you initially said. You said "it does not take longer than 8 minutes on an average for me to draw my entire deck". Showing your opponent one sequence/loop, then explaining how it'll repeat, all within 8 minutes, is very different than physically repeating the loop 45-50 times in order to draw your deck within the same 8 minute timeframe. You've now given me two completely different scenarios, which one is it?

Lord Seth

04-22-2013, 04:46 PM

Again if the banned list weren't 50 cards long it's likely this deck wouldn't even exist (Dredge might be a faster GY based combo deck? Mental Misstep might be a universal solvent for fair decks to interact whilst tapped out? Wild Nacatyl might be fast enough to kill before the fundamental turn for eggs) ... but that's where we areThis is a pretty valid point. After Cifka's win, Eggs pretty much just dropped off the map. There was no real need to ban it...and then Seething Song and Bloodbraid Elf got banned. That's when Eggs started showing up again. It's hard to believe the re-emergence of Eggs was unrelated.

Fade

04-22-2013, 04:49 PM

That is not what you initially said. You said "it does not take longer than 8 minutes on an average for me to draw my entire deck". Showing your opponent one sequence/loop, then explaining how it'll repeat, all within 8 minutes, is very different than physically repeating the loop 45-50 times in order to draw your deck within the same 8 minute timeframe. You've now given me two completely different scenarios, which one is it?

I have stated it before that as long as my opponent acknowledges that they are F6'd and can't interact, then yes I can draw my entire deck in 8 minutes or less. Within this time, I lay my hand on the table and allow them to see all of the sunrises I draw. It is up to them to concede if they want. Otherwise, I continue to "goldfish" the deck. I assure you it does not take more than 8 minutes to move ~8 eggs into the graveyard, draw ~8 cards from doing this, cast a second sunrise, put any draw triggers on the stack, bauble the sunrise to the bottom, crack a fetch/ghost, and then repeat until you have drawn your library.

After doing this for 100+ games you get used to the motions and if you feel really lazy can just put all the egg triggers on the stack to quickly draw cards instead of individually. Once you hit the pyrite spellbomb and have drawn your deck the loop is elementary and can be explained in half a minute.

JDK

04-22-2013, 07:21 PM

- the deck wasn't skill intensive, it required some basic ordering but never had to enter combat or interact with targeted discard or explore multiple avenues to victory (e.g. Legacy TES), it simply went off or didn't - playing some silence effects or basic bounce to salvage game two (if there was a game 2)

- the deck has humiliating on camera examples some with players leaving the table of pro level events whilst their opponent dicked about with simple sequencing

- its presence adds nothing to the modern format in the way of attracting players, imagine graduating standard guy sits down and plays against eggs, i'm sure he'd be back for more interactive fun the next week

- just a boring, binary deck, i draw hate cards and play first and win, i don't draw hate cards and lose - what a great match

Nobody claimed it was a skill-intensive deck (not that I know of ^^). I am curious however why you mention entering combat...is combat math now the measurement for "real" skill? What do you mean by not "interacting with targeted discard"? If you are referring to Leyline of Sanctity: Sideboarding is actually interaction with this kind of "hate".

There's one video footage I know of, which involves Brian Kibler. He played a creature deck and complains about his lack of interaction with combo. Yeah...

Another irrelevant point in terms of the banning discussion. Ban cards because a deck doesn't attract players to the format? On the other hand it was a cheap deck and an interesting choice for ex-Storm players.

If you break games down to this kind or argument let's put it this way: I draw fuel and do something to win vs I don't draw fuel and lose...that's every fucking match...

You don't like Eggs, we get it.

Phoenix Ignition

04-22-2013, 08:17 PM

So because people think a deck is not fun to watch, then it should be banned... This logic is spot on.

I view magic as a fun activity. It is fun both to play and watch others play. I think watching someone play eggs was boring, and playing against eggs in person is also boring. Therefore I am a fan of banning it. Please explain my logical fallacy.

Mr. Froggy

04-22-2013, 09:15 PM

Fade

04-22-2013, 10:06 PM

I view magic as a fun activity. It is fun both to play and watch others play. I think watching someone play eggs was boring, and playing against eggs in person is also boring. Therefore I am a fan of banning it. Please explain my logical fallacy.

I find deck X to be boring to watch/play against. Therefore, I'm a fan of banning deck X. Let deck X be any deck in any format. In modern, it could be Jund, Gifts, Pod, UWR, really anything.

It's similar to the whole logic that this deck/card is too good and it should be banned argument with no real justified reason on why it should be banned. Eggs isn't dominating the format. There are multitudes of hate cards against it and it can be easily beaten. Why limit a player's deck choice just because you or the masses don't find it interesting to watch when there are plenty of people who love playing that kind of magic for fun?

(nameless one)

04-22-2013, 10:15 PM

I find that a Chalice at one can really shut down Eggs, as long as you have a win condition.

Phoenix Ignition

04-22-2013, 10:22 PM

I find deck X to be boring to watch/play against. Therefore, I'm a fan of banning deck X. Let deck X be any deck in any format. In modern, it could be Jund, Gifts, Pod, UWR, really anything.

It's similar to the whole logic that this deck/card is too good and it should be banned argument with no real justified reason on why it should be banned. Eggs isn't dominating the format. There are multitudes of hate cards against it and it can be easily beaten. Why limit a player's deck choice just because you or the masses don't find it interesting to watch when there are plenty of people who love playing that kind of magic for fun?

I don't like deck X. I'm a fan of them banning a card to make deck X no longer a deck.

Not a single thing wrong with my logic. My enjoyment doesn't come from you having fun with playing eggs. What aren't you getting here?

Fade

04-23-2013, 12:11 AM

I don't like deck X. I'm a fan of them banning a card to make deck X no longer a deck.

Not a single thing wrong with my logic. My enjoyment doesn't come from you having fun with playing eggs. What aren't you getting here?

Logic and reasoning are closely related and the expression I used was more related to your reasoning behind banning a deck. You are correct, your logic is fine, your reasoning on the other hand is what I disagree with.

Technics

04-23-2013, 12:13 AM

I don't like deck X. I'm a fan of them banning a card to make deck X no longer a deck.

Not a single thing wrong with my logic. My enjoyment doesn't come from you having fun with playing eggs. What aren't you getting here?

I only enjoy storm and eggs. I'm a fan of banning every card in the format not in those two decks. Nothing wrong with my logic.

Phoenix Ignition

04-23-2013, 01:04 AM

I only enjoy storm and eggs. I'm a fan of banning every card in the format not in those two decks. Nothing wrong with my logic.

This is accurate. It's also a very strange attempt to troll me? I'm not getting the troll part of it but I know that's the intent.

bkemke

04-23-2013, 01:40 AM

Wow, modern players are getting the shaft. Look at these awesome deck lists from the debut of modern at the community cup. Actually looks like a fun format:
https://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/mtgoccup11/thu

Koby

04-23-2013, 02:27 AM

I am disappoint that Griselbrand is still free from the Helvault. Time to jam some more Turn 2 wins until WotC gets the message I suppose.

JDK

04-23-2013, 05:13 AM

This is accurate. It's also a very strange attempt to troll me? I'm not getting the troll part of it but I know that's the intent.
What should be banned and what you don't like are different things. Therefor your logic isn't wrong, it's just not useful for a discussion (as your statement is an expression of your feelings - which is perfectly fine, but nothing to reason with - can be taken ad absurdum easily).

feline

04-23-2013, 07:52 AM

Well I finished off Eggs, got the last 2 Second Sunrises at SCG Seattle, probably within a few hours of the banning announcement, but whatever it was just 24 bucks!

The type's of decks I'd like to play though, are all banned in Modern, or just not viable, obviously Storm took a hit, now eggs, and yet there's no real control decks in Modern, it's all aggro & midrange stuff, hopefully some cool cards get printed over the course of the upcoming sets, & some potential new combo decks come out or something that are viable.

nedleeds

04-23-2013, 10:29 AM

Nobody claimed it was a skill-intensive deck (not that I know of ^^). I am curious however why you mention entering combat...is combat math now the measurement for "real" skill? What do you mean by not "interacting with targeted discard"? If you are referring to Leyline of Sanctity: Sideboarding is actually interaction with this kind of "hate".

world's best Eggs players

even for skilled Eggs pilots

I mean that a deck that at no point has to enter combat discards 1/3 of magics rules, a deck that doesn't interact at all with its opponent (through targeted discard ... you know Duress, Thoughtseize???) sheds another 1/3 of the possibilities leaving a pretty linear 5th grade math problem. Some people used the term skill in conjunction with Eggs and it made me laugh because the deck eschews 80% of the things required to be a decent magic player. Sideboarding white leyline is interaction? Please ... really you are making yourself look silly. Is finding it in your opening 7 also "skill intensive"?

Another irrelevant point in terms of the banning discussion. Ban cards because a deck doesn't attract players to the format? On the other hand it was a cheap deck and an interesting choice for ex-Storm players.

So it's cheap so it should stick around? Yes lets go to a 64 person tourney and have 58 people playing this pile of irritating shit. Wow. What a great game, come buy our packs! Play our premier eternal format! Walk the planes! What where are everyones opponents? Why are half the people reading iPads? ... no no it's not solitaire the other players are all in the bathroom. Having a reasonable 2 player game is part of competitive play, unfortunately eggs doesn't / didn't do that. Having the format include a highly competitive one player matchup is going to kill the format. If 60 people bring mid range creature decks of various colors to a 100 person modern tourney everyone has a match, if 60 people brought eggs to a 100 person modern tourney you'd have a fucking slumber party.

If you want non interactive combo then play Legacy, how many times does wizards have to make that clear ??? Somebody might even start an internet message board devoted to Legacy and you could post your deck ideas there.

If you break games down to this kind or argument let's put it this way: I draw fuel and do something to win vs I don't draw fuel and lose...that's every fucking match...

No. It's not ... eggs simply goes limp to certain narrow hate cards, when in play the deck can't do anything but hope to have a bounce / removal effect. In a game of 2 player magic we might have a variety of effects, discard, removal, direct damage that doubles as removal, combat interactions. Eggs versus the g/w player is have I mulled to multiple hate effects and has humpty found echoing truth. Wow. Fun.

You don't like Eggs, we get it.

Thanks.

JDK

04-23-2013, 11:25 AM

I mean that a deck that at no point has to enter combat discards 1/3 of magics rules, a deck that doesn't interact at all with its opponent (through targeted discard ... you know Duress, Thoughtseize???) sheds another 1/3 of the possibilities leaving a pretty linear 5th grade math problem. Some people used the term skill in conjunction with Eggs and it made me laugh because the deck eschews 80% of the things required to be a decent magic player. Sideboarding white leyline is interaction? Please ... really you are making yourself look silly. Is finding it in your opening 7 also "skill intensive"?
So a deck not playing targeted Discard and a lack of combat usage is not skill-intensive? "Skilled eggs players" doesn't mean they are geniuses at playing MTG, it just means they are good at playing this specific deck. Before you let us know about your polemics consider that even Eggs needs some skill. If you don't see that, okay, but talking about combat math and 5th grad math problems...

I didn't say that boarding Leyline in particular is skill-intensive. I just called it interaction, because I misunderstood your "interact with targeted discard" (by which apparently you mean "play targeted discard").

So it's cheap so it should stick around?
You said it didn't attract people to the format. I said it's cheap, which is a legitimate reason to not believe so, as there aren't many competitively viable budget decks out there. Don't let your hate blind your interpretation skills, please.

If you want non interactive combo then play Legacy, how many times does wizards have to make that clear ??? Somebody might even start an internet message board devoted to Legacy and you could post your deck ideas there.

"non interactive"?
Actually you can interact with Eggs. I've given examples in one of my previous posts and it doesn't take a good player to figure out how. Tapping creatures won't cut it in most cases, of course. ;)

No. It's not ... eggs simply goes limp to certain narrow hate cards, when in play the deck can't do anything but hope to have a bounce / removal effect. In a game of 2 player magic we might have a variety of effects, discard, removal, direct damage that doubles as removal, combat interactions. Eggs versus the g/w player is have I mulled to multiple hate effects and has humpty found echoing truth. Wow. Fun.
Of course it is. If you don't draw certain cards against certain other cards you are going to lose. That's a huge part of the game in every format and in every single match. No fun for you? Too bad, deal with it (in case of eggs you won't have to anymore at least). If you are just hateful towards Eggs because it's a straight-forward combo like SnT, so be it, but please don't argue for the sake of arguing.

joemauer

04-23-2013, 12:42 PM

I am disappoint that Griselbrand is still free from the Helvault. Time to jam some more Turn 2 wins until WotC gets the message I suppose.

Not sure why you guys are surprised/riled up with the fact that eggs got banned. I am more surprised Grizzlebrand did not get banned as well, but it will probably happen sooner or later.

The sad thing is that with the careful dismantling of combo in Modern, WotC is pretty much reassuring us that Force of Will won't be reprinted in a traditional set any time soon.

Fade

04-23-2013, 01:43 PM

Not sure why you guys are surprised/riled up with the fact that eggs got banned. I am more surprised Grizzlebrand did not get banned as well, but it will probably happen sooner or later.

The sad thing is that with the careful dismantling of combo in Modern, WotC is pretty much reassuring us that Force of Will won't be reprinted in a traditional set any time soon.

For me and a lot of other people, it was the reasoning of making tournaments last longer. A lot of players who have played the deck can finish 3 games without going to time and it was really only the pilots who have just picked up the deck and are learning how to play it in the tournament that went to time. I would've rather them say they don't want combo decks in the format or they thought Eggs was too dominate (not that I agree with it being a dominate archetype in Modern).

DragoFireheart

04-23-2013, 02:23 PM

lulz, critical Eggs card got banned but Griselbanned didn't.

JDK

04-23-2013, 02:27 PM

Koby

04-23-2013, 02:29 PM

Actually I can get behind the reasoning they gave us. Not because I think the deck is an extra-turns contenter per se, but because there actually ARE slower players. If they'd just take out Top in Legacy as well for this reason. T_T

They did take out Tops iin Extended for the same reason. Considering that PTQs have real tournament size/space/time concerns, this ban makes sense for the desired effect. I think a Lotus Bloom or Reshape ban would have been better to neuter the deck; but that's what we have right now and it will reduce people playing the deck.

nedleeds

04-23-2013, 02:46 PM

You said it didn't attract people to the format. I said it's cheap, which is a legitimate reason to not believe so, as there aren't many competitively viable budget decks out there. Don't let your hate blind your interpretation skills, please.

I base it on 29 out of 30 magic players who play magic at real stores at real weeklies not wanting to deal with playing against (or playing with) the egg deck because it's fucking miserable. I guess I hate sitting down and doing nothing for 30 minutes or drawing my hate cards and blowing out a shitbox deck with no defenses in 4 minutes ... when I'd rather be playing modern. What a kill joy I am. I'm done arguing, WotC agrees and 99% of the people who actually come to play magic on Modern night agree.

DragoFireheart

04-23-2013, 02:51 PM

The sad thing is that with the careful dismantling of combo in Modern, WotC is pretty much reassuring us that Force of Will won't be reprinted in a traditional set any time soon.

Don't worry, they'll print more stuff by accident that will enable another powerful combo deck. Modern will die if WotC continues to just ban stuff because it shows how incompetent they are at managing Modern.

ahg113

04-23-2013, 03:26 PM

They did take out Tops iin Extended for the same reason. Considering that PTQs have real tournament size/space/time concerns, this ban makes sense for the desired effect. I think a Lotus Bloom or Reshape ban would have been better to neuter the deck; but that's what we have right now and it will reduce people playing the deck.

+1 Koby in spotting Lotus Bloom or Reshape could have made the deck less effective, but still viable. It would've been the more appropriate card to cut. I'm not a fan of Eggs, but I disagree with the way WotC went about swinging the ban hammer.

@H3llsp4wn & Koby - as a non-blue player in Legacy, I love Top and would be uber pissed if it got cut. An opponent (playing Esper Stoneblade) said Top was lame due to my constant use of it, while on the other side of the table, he did the same thing with a Jace. Pot calling Kettle black? Just wanted to vent, thank you.

Cheers,
there's room for everyone, or there should be

nedleeds

04-23-2013, 03:31 PM

Bloom is an interesting card for Tezzeret and other applications ... I'm glad they banned the narrow card. Nobody was using Second Sunrise to come back from Wrath or anything.

Phoenix Ignition

04-23-2013, 03:36 PM

What should be banned and what you don't like are different things. Therefor your logic isn't wrong, it's just not useful for a discussion (as your statement is an expression of your feelings - which is perfectly fine, but nothing to reason with - can be taken ad absurdum easily).

No, I think you're wrong in this case. Even if the deck weren't completely obnoxious to play against, had plenty of cards that you could sideboard in to beat, and didn't take forever, it is still possible that the correct choice by WotC is to ban it. Twitch.tv and other tournament streams (ggslive, whatever other ones) are a large draw to many people who like magic already and a great way to retain interest for people who don't have local areas to play specific formats or are just too busy at the moment. I don't have the numbers on other people, but I can tell you that whenever any stream at all showed Eggs I would either turn off the stream or mute it and wait for something better to come up. The deck is just boring, as comboing out doesn't require thought intensive things like IGG loop or happen quickly like Ad Nauseum or Belcher wins. You have the opponent literally writing "F6" on a piece of paper and sliding it under the camera. Who wants to watch that?

You may think that all decisions are based on metagame health, but there are more aspects to magic than just diversity of decks. People's perception of how fun it is to play in X format is what drives most people towards or away from it.

Don't worry, they'll print more stuff by accident that will enable another powerful combo deck. Modern will die if WotC continues to just ban stuff because it shows how incompetent they are at managing Modern.

You say this in every thread, yet don't have any facts to back it up. I get your doomsdaying, but do you have to say the same thing everywhere without any new information on it?

Koby

04-23-2013, 03:38 PM

The desired effect for old Extended and now Modern is chiefly concerned with PTQ logistics. Untimed Top 8s cannot actually start at 10 PM when most venues are rented out. To this end, WotC wants to ensure that tournaments don't run excessively longer than needed. The Eggs deck was a primary reason these tournaments ran long. Thus, the goal to prevent the delays heed the need to ban something from that deck, with prior precedence. The ban to that end is justified.

Legacy doesn't have those concerns for one reason: it is not a PTQ format.

DragoFireheart

04-23-2013, 03:56 PM

You say this in every thread, yet don't have any facts to back it up. I get your doomsdaying, but do you have to say the same thing everywhere without any new information on it?

What new information are you expecting exactly? Secret WotC documents detailing the current turn over of players leaving/entering Modern and their current and future goals?

Modern is a fun experiment to watch. I'd imagine that some people (I myself included) have thought "I wonder what an Eternal format without Force of Will would be like"? Well, Modern is that result. Compared to Vintage, Legacy, Standard and even Extended, I don't think we have ever seen a format with bannings as frequent as Moderns. This hints at a few things:

1. WotC is incompetent when it comes to Modern (somewhat obvious).
2. Modern will continue to have periods of X deck performing well, Y card gets banned, and then repeat Ad Nauseum.
3. The above two may drive away players to go play a more stable and active format. If it's Legacy, it will cause Legacy card prices to go up (see: SCG raising prices recently on Legacy staples).

Phoenix Ignition

04-23-2013, 04:18 PM

Lord Seth

04-23-2013, 06:02 PM

lulz, critical Eggs card got banned but Griselbanned didn't.Why in the world does this surprise you? Griselbrand doesn't see play in any of the top decks or even have much of a presence in the format and doesn't take forever to win. This is like being astonished that Mental Misstep got banned but Trinisphere didn't in Legacy.

1. I think the exact opposite is true. They're trying to keep a format that has more interaction and a slower critical turn. Sometimes they even need to ban things that just take too damn long Sensei's Divining Top (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/2). By banning random combo pieces that pop up (with a gigantic card pool it's hard to tell both which combos will work and which are too hard to stop, some bannings from time to time are expected, unlike in Legacy where it is only their goal to keep degenerate combos from happening) they can keep it under control. Sometimes the combos just take too long for the average player to have a tournament either large or small scale work.I think banning Top for time reasons was dumb, but it's very possible that was the initial reason, but they kept it banned due to power reasons (it is a very strong card).

The issue with Eggs, I feel, wasn't just that it took a long time, it's that it took a long time and was played fairly often. Sure, Spiral Tide in Legacy can take long turns, but due to its expense (Candelabras in particular) you don't see the deck that much. Eggs, on the other hand, was one of the easiest and cheapest decks in the format to build.

2. One could argue rotating bans keep the format dynamic and exciting. As a deck builder I was very happy to the possibilities that came from Bloodbraid Elf being banned.If I wanted that, I'd play Standard (which for the record: I do), where I'd know exactly what cards would be banned (well, rotated) and exactly when they would be banned. That's not true for Modern, where we keep getting these bans with the advance notice of a few weeks. Knowing two years ahead of time I can't play with Snapcaster Mage in Standard is a lot different than knowing two weeks ahead of time I can't play with Second Sunrise in Modern.

joemauer

04-24-2013, 09:02 AM

It is kind of funny how Wizards wants this format slower yet faster at the same time.

DragoFireheart

04-24-2013, 04:32 PM

Griselbrand doesn't see play in any of the top decks or even have much of a presence in the format...

Yet.

DragoFireheart

04-24-2013, 04:35 PM

1. I think the exact opposite is true. They're trying to keep a format that has more interaction and a slower critical turn. Sometimes they even need to ban things that just take too damn long Sensei's Divining Top (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/2). By banning random combo pieces that pop up (with a gigantic card pool it's hard to tell both which combos will work and which are too hard to stop, some bannings from time to time are expected, unlike in Legacy where it is only their goal to keep degenerate combos from happening) they can keep it under control. Sometimes the combos just take too long for the average player to have a tournament either large or small scale work.

2. One could argue rotating bans keep the format dynamic and exciting. As a deck builder I was very happy to the possibilities that came from Bloodbraid Elf being banned.

3. The above two may also drive more players towards the format. SCG raising prices on Legacy staples does not mean that people are driven from Modern to Legacy, it means they're a business with the largest amount of money to throw around and create a collusive oligopoly. Without any evidence, you're trying to connect Legacy's raising prices to Modern dying?

I don't think all of the bannings are necessarily bad, but seeing the frequency of the bannings just looks really unprofessional if they are trying to host Modern as a PTQ format.

And I wasn't trying to say that Modern dying per say is making Legacy get more expensive. What I was trying to say that people who don't like the constant bannings in Moden might move onto the more stable Legacy, which could be a source of it's prices rising. Modern dying or not had no bearing on what point I was trying to make.

As far as keeping the format dynamic, I would rather see that happen from decks being made as opposed to decks being removed on a regular basis.

TraxDaMax

04-24-2013, 08:57 PM

No, I think you're wrong in this case. Even if the deck weren't completely obnoxious to play against, had plenty of cards that you could sideboard in to beat, and didn't take forever, it is still possible that the correct choice by WotC is to ban it. Twitch.tv and other tournament streams (ggslive, whatever other ones) are a large draw to many people who like magic already and a great way to retain interest for people who don't have local areas to play specific formats or are just too busy at the moment. I don't have the numbers on other people, but I can tell you that whenever any stream at all showed Eggs I would either turn off the stream or mute it and wait for something better to come up. The deck is just boring, as comboing out doesn't require thought intensive things like IGG loop or happen quickly like Ad Nauseum or Belcher wins. You have the opponent literally writing "F6" on a piece of paper and sliding it under the camera. Who wants to watch that?

You may think that all decisions are based on metagame health, but there are more aspects to magic than just diversity of decks. People's perception of how fun it is to play in X format is what drives most people towards or away from it.

You say this in every thread, yet don't have any facts to back it up. I get your doomsdaying, but do you have to say the same thing everywhere without any new information on it?

Am I mistaken or did you just diss Eggs for being boring to watch? Oh yeah, watching those lingering soul tokens block each other all day felt so much more interactive. GP Lyon was one of the most boring streams I've ever watched because of those flying peckers.
I rather see an egg player combo out or fizzle. Takes less time then 8 goddamn attacksteps...

Lord Seth

04-30-2013, 05:43 PM

Yet."It might be a lot better in the future" is a pretty lousy reason to ban something.

Koby

04-30-2013, 06:04 PM

"It might be a lot better in the future" is a pretty lousy reason to ban something.

Didn't stop WotC from banning Survival for that very reasoning. Truth is, when (and not if) WotC prints another good reanimation or spell-based kill con then Griselbrand will be on the cross-hairs. It only takes one piece of synergistic enabler/finisher to make the current Griselbrand deck over the top.

Lord Seth

04-30-2013, 08:14 PM

Didn't stop WotC from banning Survival for that very reasoning.That wasn't the "very reasoning". This was their reasoning, and I quote:

In recent months, Survival of the Fittest decks have been outperforming other decks in Legacy. This has caused the competitive format to become significantly less diverse. This has reached a point where the DCI concluded that it is appropriate to ban a card.

Other cards were considered, such as Vengevine. However some of the winning decks do not even play Vengevine; instead, they primarily rely on combinations with Necrotic Ooze. Also, Survival is a card that gives the decks a lot of resilience to potential answer cards. Some combination decks fail when they draw cards intended as answers to opponents' decks instead of cards that are part of their winning combination. However, with Survival of the Fittest on the battlefield, a drawn Qasali Pridemage can be replaced with any other creature in the deck for one mana.Not a word about future cards making it too good. All of their reasoning was about the present. Now, people have argued whether the ban was really necessary and whether the meta just needed a little more time to sort itself out, but you're just misrepresenting the reasoning they gave.

Truth is, when (and not if) WotC prints another good reanimation or spell-based kill con then Griselbrand will be on the cross-hairs. It only takes one piece of synergistic enabler/finisher to make the current Griselbrand deck over the top.And if so, they'd ban it then. Saying a card should be banned because at some point in the future it might be too good due to some other card is kind of absurd. So I'm very puzzled as to why someone would be surprised Eggs (which delayed entire events) would get a ban, but not a card from a fringe deck that doesn't have that problem.

Phoenix Ignition

04-30-2013, 11:16 PM

Am I mistaken or did you just diss Eggs for being boring to watch? Oh yeah, watching those lingering soul tokens block each other all day felt so much more interactive.
I mean... that's the very definition of interaction applied to Magic.

GP Lyon was one of the most boring streams I've ever watched because of those flying peckers.
I rather see an egg player combo out or fizzle. Takes less time then 8 goddamn attacksteps...

There are always outliers, but I don't think the majority of magic players enjoy watching a deck combo out that takes at least 5 minutes using shortcuts already. Not only could you not really tell what was happening on a stream while the player was comboing out (mana floating, spells on the stack, graveyards are all harder to make out), there was no real appeal to the combo that made it entertaining (charbelcher at least flips cards off the top and has a chance of missing).

But even if appeal is taken out of the conversation completely, the deck took too damn long and held up tournaments.

nnjnnj

05-05-2013, 11:06 AM

The biggest flaw in the banning of second sunrise on logistics is thinking a round will not go to time just because one deck is not played. This is incorrect I have seen affinity vs affinity go time just because one of the players slow plays everything. This is not very common but there are other decks that drag the game out as well and banning cards out of all of those decks would kill the modern format... Also eggs has a fairly consistent T3 kill (not nearly as consistent as storms was but still there) and wizards is trying to keep this style of combo deck out of the format I would not be surprised to see something in blistercoil weird get banned purely based on the fact it can win on turn 2 or 3 pretty easily. Though wizards may not have said it I believe this was a large contributing factor in the banning of second sunrise though I am sad to see it banned as I was going to start learning eggs in my free time with it being one of two decks I have not picked up in modern and played.

In all I do not think it deserved its banning the deck was easily disrupted by some of the most popular decks in the format remand a lotus bloom off suspend and the player has to wait another 3 turns to attempt to combo if you cant kill them in 6 turns on a tempo geist deck you probably kept a hand you should not have. There are cards in the format that just hose what the deck is designed to do a T2 stoney silence is also usually just a win against the deck Tidehollow Sculler and other hand disruption also fine. The only decks that have problems with eggs are decks that do not interact with their opponents non creature spells/permanents and those style of decks are always going to have problems with combo decks in general so why ban sunrise when it was not breaking the format play a sideboard card that allows you to beat the deck and stop crying....

Lord Seth

05-05-2013, 01:06 PM